Back on study abroad in college, the boys and I went on a two week trip through Iberia. Barcelona, Valencia, Seville and Lisbon. This is the first part on Valencia and Las Falles. Enjoy the throwback writing style and content! (This is Part 2. Do check out Part 1 if you get the chance!)
Something I was pretty happy about is that my Spanish wasn’t bad at all. I could definitely get around pretty fine. Certainly I wasn’t fluent or even conversational by any means, but I could ask basic phrases and get places just fine. I peaked when I asked perfectly clearly and speedily to a restaurant owner, “Puedo entrar con esta cerveza?” with a 40 in my hand and visibly inebriated. Oh well, at least my Spanish improved right!?
At one of the restaurants we went (lord knows which at this point) I got sardines with ham and cheese and lentil soup. I don’t really know why I jotted this down to discuss, I just am relaying the message. But I guess I can riff off this, thus proving I really can talk to anyone, including me, myself, and future I. Anyways fishy little fish (eloquent) have really surprised me. I’ve always like sardines but the combinations I’ve seen them in in Iberia was sweet. Also I think I said this but anchovies on pizza is the greatest thing anyone has ever thought of since pizza itself.
There was a restaurant called The Good Burger, which looks, feels and tastes exactly Shake Shack in the tri-state area (gross, did I just say that?) I think any city in the world isn’t livable unless it has one decent burger joint. Sure, it’s a chain, but it is still damn freaking good.
During the nighttime activities, there would just be kids roaming everywhere just fucking around with fireworks. Like 8 year olds. By themselves. With what probably constitutes dynamite. Piles of ash. Fireworks unlit inside smothering ash ready to ignite. Boom. Just walking around it. Just. Fucking. There. Spaniards are all kinds of psycho—albeit good psychos mind you. People would be in a crowd just tossing around fireworks at peoples’ feet. Just drunks tossing around dynamite. C’est dope.
Back to Las Falles. The last day was absolutely bonkers if not for the fact that we had to catch a 6am flight to Seville. So the street intersections are like they were in Barcelona (yes an odd way to begin about how nuts something was.) Basically just a big octagon that makes it annoying to cross on foot, but allows for more parking and, as it turns out, better festivals.
Since they were much more open spaces as compared to a normal intersection it was perfect to have huge crowds encircle a float. People are just milling about everywhere. Firecrackers everywhere. There’s kinda a rhythm to the last day. You hear fireworks going off. You find them. Go to them. When they end, they light a string of fireworks that end up lighting the gasoline-doused float. It goes up in flames. A plume of black smoke emerges. Foam comes off in chunks. You see the wooden skeleton. It breaks and falls. And by that point you hear a new set of firework launching in the air. Rinse. Repeat. There were also bomberos (firefighters) everywhere there was a float. There was one that was just wayyy too tall for its own good, so they wet all the trees around it and constantly just sprayed down the thing as it burned so nothing crazy happed (ie someone got lit on fire.)
The first one we saw there was a girl, fallera I believe they’re called. She was absolutely bawling her eyes out. Her mom was crying and it was quite intense. Some of the chicas we were with explained that it’s the gravity of it all; it’s emotional when they did it too. However, her float ended up lighting up a much larger one next to it because of a stray firework, thus shattering another fallera’s dream of lighting one up, as well. We did this for a few hours and the next thing we knew it was 2am, and we had to get a cab back to the camp ground, and then to the airport. Where we passed on the floor til our flight. Even from the airport we saw fireworks still going off in the distance.
Other random thoughts I had from Valencia:
1) Never got to see the cathedral. Alas.
2) Traveling without a cell phone or relying on wi-fi is so damn hard. I don’t know how people met up with each other back in the day.
3) I discovered that on Google Maps, the little tracking dot always works. GPS is always on regardless of whether or not you have cell on. So if you download a map with wi-fi, your dot will always be mapped on that. That was helpful to know.
4) There was a giant float for Mary made up of roses. It was actually stunning. Maybe 25 feet tall.
5) I feel like from now on I will always travel with a notepad and pen. Phone notes are a decent substitute but I feel like so much happens that you’d forget otherwise (ie everything I’m writing right now.)
6) The bat logo was all over the city. There were even bats flying around at night. Who knew? Also, around this time, Valencia tried to get a new logo, with the bat’s wings pointed up, not down. DC Comics sued for infringing on Batman, which is horseshit. They literally have every other shape of a bat humanly possible. At least they kept the old logo.
7) When we got there, they had altered the bus lines, making it impossible to read any bus maps (which are categorically impossible to read anyways, in any city.)
8) My body was sore, need to run & stretch (not sure why I wrote that, but I can like always expand…) I’ve just been getting old after soccer. I’ve been stretching and trying to meditate and run every day.
Anyhow, that was a lot. Let’s end on that, with my college senior self being washed up already and needing a rest.
If you like what you’re reading, definitely check out some other articles on The Spain Chronicles.
Additionally, check out part 1 of this essay on Valencia.
