17th March: Las Fallas

It’s only Sunday and already it’s a stretch to think back to what I did this week. On Tuesday, the only events of interest were my English teaching with Gregorio and Carmen, which went really well, and a frustrating attempt to book my flights to Peru. I’d actually decided on a perfect set of flights, which, in the space of three hours, went up by three hundred pounds. I was so annoyed and confused about what to do that I had to stay in and Skype my parents about it instead of going out with Giorgos. In the end, my mum agreed to have a ring around for me the next day.

I started off Wednesday with my habitual run before going to the replacement Linguistics lecture at 1. The weather was still disappointingly cold and grey – not to mention ridiculously windy. After my lecture, I met Annalisa, Alicia and some Spanish girls from Methodology to do a language exchange over tapas in San Domingo. Whilst we were there, the weather went from bad to worse in the form of torrential rain and gale-force winds that hurled the outdoor chairs across the square. The open-fronted cafe didn’t provide nearly enough shelter from the chill, but we were just glad to be indoors at all. After a nice lunch and a chat, we all made our way to class, agreeing to do the same thing next week.

That evening, the girls and I met up at Alicia and Lina’s to plan the coming bank holiday weekend, before going out for a couple of drinks at a small tapas bar near university – which turned out to be full of rowdy locals. At around 1am we called it a night, knowing we’d be up late the next day for Marie Angelez’s birthday.

Thursday was more or less filled with lectures and homework, and by the time I’d finished teaching at just after 7, I was exhausted. When I turned up to teach, my pupils and their mother were thrilled to show me Carmen’s outfit for the Semana Santa parade in Murcia the following Sunday – a green cloak and hat in the style of those worn throughout Spain, to which the closest analogy I can give is a Ku Klux Klan costume. I remember when my parents and I came to Spain during Semana Santa a few years ago, not knowing anything about the custom, and being completely confused by the huge parades of people in these bizarre and slightly sinister costumes, which we stumbled across in every city we drove through. I’ve since found out that in Spain, Semana Santa or Holy Week (the week before Easter) is celebrated by elaborate pasos (processions) organized by hermandades (religious brotherhoods), in which wood or plaster sculptures of the scenes of Jesus’ death and resurrection are carried through the streets by penitents dressed in robes and pointed hats, followed by women in black. The procession is often accompanied by a brass band, drum and bugle band or military band playing funeral marches or hymns.

Anyway, after my class, I went back to the flat to cook dinner and get ready to go out. Just as I’d finished eating, Giorgos arrived and tentatively stuck his head around the door to check it was ok for his friend to come in too. I told him that of course it was ok, and was introduced to Fernando from Murcia. Naturally, as soon as we were introduced, he told me how beautiful I was; I really am beginning to think this is just a social norm here. Also, I’m no longer even the slightest bit surprised at being called after down the street on a daily basis, and wasn’t even that shocked the other day when someone came right up to my face in the high street saying, “Oiii, guapaaaa” (“Heyyyy, beautifuuuul”). A few days ago, a couple of lads just shouted “culo” (arse) after me; I wonder how excited they’d have got if I actually did have any arse to speak of. Anyway, before I knew it, Giorgos was wandering off to take a shower, leaving me to entertain the Spaniard, who was already making himself at home showing me his photos on the laptop and sharing half my chair. Good job I’m friendly.

By the time the lads had left, I had to rush to get ready in time to get to Lina and Alicia’s. Once there, we stayed and pre-drank until just after 12, when we headed to Marie Angelez’s house for her birthday. There were already loads of people in the little living room and out on the balcony, and we left for Boutique at just after 2. We stayed there till around 5.30, when Giorgos and his friends and I got bored and went to the park for a while before going to a shisha bar. It was 7.30am by the time we walked home; we saw a few people on their way to work.

The next day I was rudely awoken by a phone call at 11am from Alicia from my General Translation group, wondering where I was; she’d sent me a Facebook message the night before when I was out, asking me to meet the group that day at 10.30am to do our presentation. The last thing I felt like doing was going to university and working on a translation, but I couldn’t let the group down so dragged myself out of bed, pulled on some clothes and went to find them in the library. An hour later, we were done, giving me a few hours to eat and nap before my lecture at 4. That evening all I could manage to do was curl up in bed and watch Harry Potter in Spanish, and I couldn’t bring myself to sit and chat for long when Fernando arrived at 9.

My alarm woke me from a beautiful sleep the next morning at 6.45am, an inhuman hour to be getting up. An hour later, I was waiting with my friends to get onto the ESN (Erasmus Student Network) bus to Valencia. That day was the trip to Las Fallas, a huge celebration in honour of Saint Joseph which takes place every year in the city. The word fallas comes from the Latin fax for ‘torch’, because each area of the Valencian Community (or casal faller) makes a construction called a falla, which are all burnt on the last day of the festival. During the five days of celebration, everyone eats and drinks on the streets; there are long processions of people in traditional dress accompanied by brass bands and continuous explosions of firecrackers and noisemakers. We were amazed and more than a little alarmed to see children as young as four armed with explosives which they were throwing with gay abandon up into the air; more than once, we genuinely feared for our lives. It turns out health and safety isn’t very important here.

We arrived in Valencia not long after midday and, after a big group photo, the whole ESN group walked into the city centre together. When everyone split off, my friends and I found a bench to sit and eat lunch before wandering the streets to soak up the atmosphere and see some of the fallas. Our favourites included a mermaid, a cinema and a montage of Disney characters including The Lady and the Tramp, Aladdin, The Lion King, Bambi and 101 Dalmatians. We had ice cream outside the beautiful cathedral and stopped for coffee near the spectacular town hall. When it was time to find somewhere for dinner, we were disappointed to discover that everywhere had run out of the famous Valencian paella, and had to settle for some snack food in a cafe a little off the beaten track. By this time it was gone 8pm, and we sat in the park together with our drinks for a while before making our way to the ESN botellon (outdoor drinking) at 10.30.

It was still too cold to be drinking outside, if you ask me, but thankfully my fingers were kept alive by my trusty bear gloves. We were joined by some of Alicia’s French friends from class, and were happy chatting and playing games until we ran out of drink. By this time it was approaching 1am, and in Spain, shops stop serving alcohol at 9pm – so it was a bit of a fool’s errand, to be honest. We had no idea where we were when the fireworks display started at 1am, but we weren’t going to miss it in the vain search for drink, so stopped where we were.

All the traffic had been stopped for the festival, so we joined the big crowd of people standing in the middle of the road to watch the event. As I sat on the road crossed-legged, gazing up at the sky, I became aware again of how amazing life is, and how lucky I was to be experiencing all these incredible things.

When the display had finished, Alicia and I made our way back to the others, who by then had given up waiting and gone in search of some toilets. After a few minutes they returned and we went to a bar for a while to get warm. When it was time to look for the coach home, which was leaving at 4am, we bumped into a couple of guys who started to try and talk to us. We made our excuses and turned away, but a few minutes later they came over again, and I couldn’t help saying, “Oh, no...” Offended, one of the guys tried to grab our interest by saying that his friend was a tenor. It sort of worked, because I before I could stop myself it the words, “I’m a soprano!” were out of my mouth. Then, when they asked me to prove it, instead of saying “I don’t care if you believe me or not” I accidentally said, “I don’t care if you love me or not” – at which they hugged me and called me a “true Spanish woman”. We managed to make our excuses again but must have bumped into them at least once more before we eventually found the meeting place. Then, while we were waiting for the coaches to arrive, we decided to try out Cossack dancing – and who should turn up, but the two guys again. I can only imagine how odd we must have seemed, but they just said, “So, did you find your bus?” The fact that I answered “No” just as Alicia said “Yes” can’t have helped matters.

Eventually, at 4am, the coaches pulled up on the other side of the roundabout, and we dragged ourselves over to them. By the time we got there, our coach was already almost full and we couldn’t get any seats together – which was less of a disaster than we originally thought, since we were all out like a light from the moment the coach set off until it pulled up in Murcia three hours later. I can’t describe the feeling of exhaustion, cold and hunger that I experienced getting off that coach and dragging myself back to my flat. It had been a great twenty-four hours, but now all I needed was my nice warm bed.