Previously: 40 Years in Beer (Book II) Part 54: New Albanians on beer holiday in Old Albania (1994).
Albania was exhilarating and exhausting. For the next leg of Euro ’94, the flight plan led from Tirana to Zurich for a quick transfer, then on to Madrid, where we arrived late in the evening, pausing only for a night’s sleep before hopping a train to Pamplona. There’d be time for Madrid (and Toledo) before the flight home.
It was the first of four visits to the Fiesta de San Fermin during even-numbered years from 1994 through 2000. As enjoyable as the festival was, and as much as I cherish the friends and I made there, my interests ultimately were to be found elsewhere, and I haven’t returned since 2000.
Much of the following was written at the time, and appeared in the F.O.S.S.I.L.S. Travel Dog. I’ve altered and augmented a few passages to include information gleaned from the subsequent trips.
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During my travels in Europe, I’ve been fortunate to witness a May Day parade in Vienna, frenetic all-night Greek political rallies, Munich’s fabled Oktoberfest, U2 performing live on stage in Ireland, selected soccer matches and two small but fascinating snippets of the Tour de France.
The fall of the Berlin Wall in ’89 was an epochal one-time celebration, requiring three decades of preparation and packing a visceral punch, but I missed that one, although only barely.
Running from July 6th through the 14th each year in Pamplona, Spain, the multi-faceted lunacy of the Festival of San Fermin tops them all.
Pamplona’s distinctive strain of craziness is a fascinating hybrid. Spectacular public displays of orgiastic, besotted and scatological indecency occur alongside demonstrations of a proud and dignified adherence to traditional values that extend too far back into time to be completely understood.
San Fermin is a primitive, almost mythological celebration expressed through daily, seemingly disparate, public and private set pieces. Confrontations between man and bull, gatherings of grandparents and grandchildren to share hot chocolate, outpourings of religious conviction, incessant marching musical mayhem and extraordinary alcoholic lubrication all suffice as demonstrative snapshots during festival days.
So it was even a century ago when an adventurous native of Oak Park, Illinois chose this tidy Spanish market town and its hitherto unknown local festival as the...Read more
