tomatina and all it´s bruises

(note, none of these photos are mine, mine are still on my disposable camera that i have yet to get developed, so when that does happen, and when i'm near a scanner, i'll put some of my photos up. that is if they turned out at all...)

so today was d-day. the tomato fight of the century. before i begin, let me just tell you, i am covered in bruises. my hair is in dreads, and i keep finding rogue pieces of tomato all over. it was so fun.

the day started at 5:15 to go check the email to see if the new friends we made got the email that we didn´t need to store anything at their apartment and we wanted to meet them at the train station instead... they didn´t. so up michael and i got and started our way to go meet them on the very outskirts of town. got to the metro. unsuccessfully tried to buy a ticket on the wrong computer (it was 5am, so no surprise i was having issues) and then after we finally got a ticket, we realized that the metro didn´t start until 6:15 and that´s when we were supposed to be meeting our new friends. so we bailed on that plan (5 euro well spent) and decided to just head off to the station and hope that we see them there.

we get up to the ticket office and ask the guy for two round trip tickets to buñol. (all the while michael and i were panicking about whether or not we´d have enough money to last the day. i´d brought 40€ and he´d brought 50€ and some american dollars.) so the guy prints our tickets and says 4,15€ per person, round trip. needless to say we had plenty of sangria spending money afterwards. so skip the boring part... train... yadda yadda yadda... and we´re in buñol!

immediately we get off the train and spot a stand that says cubalitro sangria (translation huge ass glass of sangria) 5€! so happy was i. so we buy big sangrias and water bottles and make new friends named stingray, t-bone, and jukebox (i have no idea their real names and they dont´know ours. in no time at all i was christened ´tsunami´and michael became ´whiplash´. loves it. so we hung out with them for the better part of the morning. got a photo or two with em also. i think. not really sure what all i´m gonna wind up with photos of since it´s a disposable one that has to actually be developed. how ancient. we eventually make it to the plaza after downing some form of meat in bread as our pseudo breakfast. mind you this is around 8am.

so first off down in the plaza is this thing where people climb up a greasy pole in an attempt to get a ham off of the top of a telephone pole. (why, i´m not sure... ) in any case the thing winds up being a total free for all with people standing on other people´s heads, shoulders, legs, anything that they can get a foot on. needless to say, with 95% of the people trying to get up the pole being men, i obviously had to give it a good ol female try. so all of a sudden here i am hoisted up onto the backs of total strangers, climbing my way up a mountain of people. standing on others´heads shoulders legs. whatever. and i, little ol me, made it all the way to the top of the pile!!

needless to say it was a pretty surreal experience being on the top of a 30 person pile. then the entire crown started cheering for me because i was the only girl and i was fairly high up on the pole. never in my life, and most likely never again will i have 40,000 people cheering for me. so fun. and totally amazing. so in any case, managed to lose all the boys for periods of time, then would randomly spot them all over in different places all around the pole. michael got stuck right next to the pole for a while and was the very bottom of the tower. quite a feat. literally. tens of people, all trying to get a place on the top of the pile, so he got feet on his head, on his shoulders, in his mouth. nastyness. no way i was getting near that. but alas i continued to help in the mayhem for the next 2 hours or so until the tomotoes started flowing.

then the real action started. i managed to get onto the shoulder's of stingray for a bit to see the beginnings of the action, which was amazing. in any case, buñol doesn't have very large streets and there were dump trucks, LARGE dump trucks that would come through filled with tomatoes with people on top throwing tomatoes at the 'innocent' spectators such as myself. and only if you were very lucky would the tomato truck stop in front of you and drop it's load. let's just say i was lucky. that was also when i lost my shoes. first one slipped off, and i tried to sort of find it, but i was being squished by the other hundreds of people trying to get tomatoes so i gave up and considered it a loss. but alas! i still had one shoe. for about 3 minutes and then i lost that one in the 2 feet of tomatoes i was standing in. so no more shoes for amy.

the fight started getting a smidge violent at this point. there was shirt ripping and lots of pushing and shoving involved. oh and fire water hoses. cold water hoses. anyway, the fight only lasts for an hour so i sarted to make my way to the side to sort of get out of the crazyness and catch my breath for 10 minutes or so before i sarted back. (note: at this point i have lost everyone, and am surrounded by a sea of red strangers who all smell like spaghetti sauce) so i watched the sea of people for a while, then joined. managed to find some loner shoes for the ride home (albeit they were both left feet, but hey, at that point, who's counting.) oh, and necessary for the ride on the train home is a shirt. no matter how stained or ripped, it needs to be a semi-functioning shirt. so i took my shirt, entirely ripped in half, and made a sort of robe-shirt. and tied it so it would stay without me having to hold it. very MacGeyver (sp?) of me if i do say so myself. : ) anywho, michael did the same with his shirt and we joined the sea of people back to valencia. i stopped and got rinsed off (before i met up with michael back at the train station at our 'meeting point') which was a thoroughly interesting experience because this man would take a hose and just sort of put it wherever he thought you 'needed' to get rinsed off, all the while a crowd of about 50 men are chanting 'camiseta! camiseta! (t-shirt! t-shirt) in a half-hearted attempt to get a girl to take it off and reveal her ever so sexy sports bra. very fun.

anywho, back to the train. everyone got on and immediately passed out. sans myself because i got stuck standing for a long while. but alas, made some new 'temporary' friends on the train, and eventually made it home for a long pink shower. and a lengthy well needed nap. another day well spent in the land of spaniards.

besos.

estoy aquí

i´m alive. that´s a start right? had fine flights from madison to chicago and chicago to zurich. the airport in zurich was super high tech very pretty. in any case, we got into barcelona fine and got our luggage etc. found a train, made it to the train station. and then realized we had 2.5 hours to sit around and do nothing. tried to take a nap, got yelled at because i looked homeless i guess. (i feel as though that seems to happen a lot to me when i want to take a nap) in any case, got on teh train and wound up sitting by 3 americans-i made new friends! we convinced them to to go buñol with us for tomatina so we´re meeting them at the train station at 6:15 in the morning tomorrow. that´ll be interesting. in any case, when the train ride was all said an done i´d been traveling for a full 24+ hours. needless to say, we watched a spanish game show, accidentally watched some spanish porn, and called it a night. the room turns out to be one that we have to ourselves which is nice since we won´t have to worry about our passports getting stolen while we´re at tomatina. only downside is it sort of smells like dirty socks. that you got re-wet. its gross. but i was just too tired to care, and passed out just the same.

okay today we woke up at 10 after a power 11 hours of sleep. (never have i been so happy to be horizontal) michael and i decided to just sort of wander around the old city and just wind up wherever our feet took us. we finally wound up at the main cathedral. it was gorgeous! we started the endeavour into our european exploration climbing a 20 story belltower. (think stone spiral staircase that has a railing on one side, but 2-way traffic. it was a shitshow to say the least. pretty much in order for it to work, one person had to lay flat against the inside rail, and hold on so they don´t go tumbling down the stairs while the other person squeezed behind holding onto the railing. great fun. for 20 flights. anywho, made it to the top and discovered just how out of shape i really am. (i mean i had my suspicions, but holy woah) at least i didn´t pass out like one poor lady. i suppose that´s one good thing. from the top we could see the whole city of valencia... and then my camera died. oops. after we descended the same stairs and started the whole adventure over again. although, we met fewer people on the way down, it was still just as scary because this time we were the ones holding the inner thing whle others went past. alas, we got down safely (no broken bones) and decided to do the really nerdy listening tour. but hey 4euro to see the holy grail, who can turn that down. (really, the holy grail. i had no idea it was in valencia, but hey, when in spain, right?) so yeah, i saw the holy grail. and i took a really awesome picture with it. (i´ll post things later, i don´t have my cord, oh yeah, and my camera´s dead...)

anyways, besos y hasta luego.

hello all. leaving countdown is at t-minus 0days 22hours 24minutes and 31seconds.

dear lord. i'm so unprepared.