Fallas!!! [faijas]

Only a week after the Bayona trip my inside sources gave me a hint to check out this huge annal festival in Valencia called Fallas. The same day I heard two people talking about it on the bus to school, and later a guy mentioning it on his cell phone. Hmmm. Surely enough I had to find out what all the ruckus is about.

I hatched a plan to the get there, called my loyal sidekick Make-peace,

who took the first flight out of Nottingham where he had been re-enacting a modern version of "The Color of Money", whilst moonlighting as a student, and hired Kataya and BHF (Ella, the Big-Headed Finn) [she doesn't actually have a large head, that nickname was born out of thin air (and tequila) on the night that I told you about in Play Ball!!], just to avoid the gay honeymoon remarks. It turned out that renting a car was the best (read: hardest) way to get there. And by best I mean cheapest. So we rented one, picked up Make-peace at Santiago de Compostela, wandered around in the mountain roads surrounding it for three hours to shake off any followers, or because Kataya was behind the wheel, and headed southeast.

It took Make-peace 5 hours and two relatively strong vodka-lemon drinks to get over my beard, but that's the price you pay. By the time we were about 100 miles from Madrid we found ourselves hungry and stopped in a small town, which might, by the way, go to the Top 4 Saddest Things in Spain. Not the fact that we went there, but the place itself. I'm pretty sure air stood still in that town. And not in a good, romantic little village type of way where no one's in a hurry. But more like...you know, when you wake up in the morning after a rough night, go to the bathroom, maybe take a shower and have a glass of juice (when no longer in the shower), and then return to your bedroom, and that smell of no oxygen, old booze, drawl, sweat and sub-blanket farts hits you in the face like Roy Jones Junior's right hook. That way. We were desperate, so we settled for any food, which turned out to be just that. A couple of yesterday's toasts cut into smaller bits, some limp fries and a seashell that had surely died at least twice, and not in the recent past.

At the 9-hour mark the group's morale was declining rapidly. I was whipping the C3 like Spartacus at the Colosseum, but the 1,1 litre beast was at the edge of its capacity and I, together with the gas tank, decided it was time to stop again. As fortune would have it, the gas station also carried a commendable collection of vodka, which, when combined with the mix-tape titled "Epic" quickly got the party started.

With a respectable figure of 1170 kilometers behind us we arrived at the Port of Sagunto. It was an industrial area, and one could not even see the sea in the darkness. Minor setback. 5 minutes, 38 swear words and 16 roundabouts later we somehow found the right road and thusly also our hotel. However, as we had no key and the ringing the doorbell didn't do squat, we felt like a bunch of homeless people in Baghdad, largely because the Spanish fire"crackers" seemed to lack any kind of restrictions in amount, size or loudness. I have played with firecrackers every new year since I was 8, so I have some frame of reference, and these things were insane. The medium sized ones sounded like hand grenades (and were thrown around in a similar manner) whereas the Spanish "Thunder Kings" bore a close resemblance to the mortar of a 81mm grenade launcher used by our dear armed forces. Kataya saw an older couple standing around close by, but since they didn't really speak any language properly, it took us a while to find out that they too were trying to get in. Kataya had to use Spanish, English, French and some German and 15 minutes in acquiring this information, that later proved completely useless for us. (This is exactly why Esperanto will never be REALLY spoken anywhere.)

We kept ringing the bell and banging on the door, since that, and dodging the explosives were the only things to do, and finally the door opened. It was the concierge. And by concierge I mean a drunken retard with cotton balls in his ears. Vexed because he couldn't go to the party, he decided to get drunk by himself and damp the sound of the fireworks by sticking stuff in his ears, and it worked so well that he fell asleep/passed out on the counter. That's Spain for you. We, however, had a hard time seeing the obvious comedy in this at the time and didn't exactly high-five the guy on the way to our rooms. For the next hour and a half we hunted for food but it turned out that the locals don't eat, so there wasn't any. Seriously. Nothing. Nada. So we gave up and went back to the hotel to get some good old shut-eye.

Six hours later Make-peace and I woke up abruptly and almost ducked for cover when the Apocalypse started. Five seconds later we realized that the world wasn't actually ending, but instead the locals had started a brand new day of Fallas with a bang, or around 200 actually. Well, there wasn't much we could do but to get up. Chow-time. As men we were compelled to go hunt for food for the tribe. Even though ALL the town's streets were one-way we managed to navigate our way to a Golden Arches. But wait, it gets better. Opposite to the Mickey D's there was a Burger King. Our hunt was over. The women said that the coffee was bad and the salads limp, but we thought our hunt was a success.

We could see the beach from our hotel room and decided to give it a try. Although the weather wasn't too hot, the beach was quite nice. A foot bag, a couple of Coronitas, and some mildly gay wading (the girls chose to get some "real coffee" instead) in the freezing Mediterranean made for an extremely pleasant afternoon. We heard that there would be all kinds of events and concerts later in the evening so we stayed at Sagunto for that night. And it paid off: we stumbled upon a stage where a band was playing some Spanish and Italian! hits. We recognized maybe one or two of them but sang along with every chorus. Then, in the early hours of the morning someone thought of a game, which involved going through Make-peace's personal life in its entirety. Although somehow Make-peace ended up being the only one to tell anything about themselves, so the game wasn't really a classic, at least according to him.

The next day we slept late, partly because of the night before, partly to gather strength for the next night, for it would be the big one. After midnight all the Fallas in Valencia would be burned and there would be much rejoicing. Kataya needed a few more hours to gather herself, and here's why:


The rest of us were very impressed. (You can't see Make-peace because he's spraying vodka and lemon juice through his nose.)

And then there was three. We took the train because we wanted to still have a car to get us back to Vigo. At the central station in Valencia all hell was breaking loose. At least the organizers had been smart enough to prepare for the worst. Although I don't see how the first aid people could actually help anyone if they were all in one place, posing for pictures like a football team.

Oh, well. To get him to stop worrying and to get us energized, I introduced Make-peace to the wonderfully disgusting world of "churros", sugar-coated, donut-resembling sticks that are made by a Play-Doh fat factory.

We also got ourselves some original, traditional Fallas-scarves and even Kataya found the willpower to show up, albeit in a rather "poor oxygen", so to speak.

We walked around the hectic Valencia centre and found bigger and bigger Fallas behind every corner, until it was close to midnight and time to pick the one we want to see go down in flames. We picked a Falla with some Indian and Viking! characters that looked funny and more importantly were situated dangerously close to the surrounding buildings. And since it was Spain, anything could happen.

And soon enough, it was hammer-time. The spectacle started with a crescendo of beautiful fireworks that served as an appetizer before the Fallas were lit. It took a while for the flames to lick the figures to a suitable temperature (451 F, or thereabouts) but once they did..DAEMN! The blazing inferno was nothing short of breathtaking, and the crowd cheered as if the papier-maché and wood statues would have been the Berlin Wall itself being torn down. The flames climbed higher and higher and the firemen present were forced to wet the trees and the facades of the buildings over and over again to keep them from catching on fire.

As the contraption slowly crumbled we continued walking, hoping to find another one that would still be standing (much like Elton John). And so we did. This time the journalist in me urged me to climb into a tree in search for a better angle, and it paid off. Here's a free before-after sample:


After the event it was raining ash, paper, and water from the firemen's hoses, i.e. an excellent photo-op. Btw, I also have some video clips that are pretty sweet but I have no idea how to post them here, so if you want to see them, tell me how. (I think this one's a job for the Symbol)

When everything had burned to the ground, the people spread out quickly and we found out that the next day would be a completely regular workday in Valencia. The party ended faster than I could say "Well, what the **** are we supposed to do now?". Dumbfounded by this revelation we shuffled our way back to the train station. As there were a lot of trains and not too many timetables the girls went into an information office to ask for help. Unfortunately the dude didn't have a clue were Santugo was. Kataya kept telling him that he must be kidding, how can he not know where Santugo is, it's only about 25 kms away, is he really that bad at his job and so on, you get the idea. The problem was that there is no Santugo. There is a Sagunto though, the man said to Kataya, after she had been chastising the poor man for several minutes. Whoops!!

On our way back to the hotel from SAGUNTO's train station we figured we still have the car for two days so why not check out another Spanish city while were at it. When consulted on the matter the cab driver suggested either Toledo or Segovia of which we picked the latter, because it was on the way to Vigo and sounded groovier. And so, the following morning we loaded up the faithful C3 and pressed the pedal to the metal. But that's another story, coming your way soon..

P.S. Sorry about the delay, dear readers. I was searching for new stories in various cities in Europe, of which I'll tell you in the flashest of flashes.