Burning Down the House- Las Fallas

My friend Dave I met in Valencia (the political science teacher from Flint) wrote to ask if he could come to Barcelona so he didn’t have to deal with Las Fallas. I asked him what Las Fallas was and he explained it to me. I said of course you can come up for a couple nights, but I’m coming back with you so I can check this out. He ended up not being able to come to Barcelona and I had to finish up my Eurail, so I hopped on the train to meet him for the night.

I arrived at the train station and was not ready for the crowds that greeted me. The sleepy little town I had visited the month prior had been transformed into one giant party. There were people everywhere and fireworks going off constantly, and this was at 3pm.

Las Fallas is the largest firework festival in Europe. One night they compete to see who is going to do the fireworks for the Olympics and other worldwide festivals. I wish I had been there that night, but I arrived for the burnings, that were maybe more spectacular.

I told Dave I would just take a taxi to his apartment, he laughed and said that wasn’t going to happen. So he picked me up from the station and we walked through the crowds to his apartment. (He was right, there was no way a taxi was getting through this) dropped off my bags and we quickly hit the streets to check it out. Pasadena has nothing on this city. Huge 30 foot tall paper mache statues that are just beautiful, funny and intricate, that people have spent a year planning and building to the cost of sometimes a million euro, all ready to be set ablaze. And they’re everywhere. Every neighborhood has one, and since neighborhoods are only sometimes a block or two, you can’t look anywhere without seeing one.

Around midnight they light the “statues” with fireworks, there’s a huge shift backwards as the people in the front rows try to get out of the way of the heat. You try to catch as many burings as you can, but most are set off at the same time to avoid this type of confusion. There’s beer in the street and everyone is just having a huge party. We hit a bar that Dave had many friends in, so it was a good time. Then we took off and hit another bar, when we were walking home at about 5am the city looked like a war zone.

The next morning (afternoon?) we woke up and went to get something to eat. The streets were quiet, they were absolutely clean and there was absolutely no sign that any of this had gone on the night before. It was a little bit like the Twilight zone.

So of course it was only 1pm and none of the restaurants that serve the good paella were open yet, so Dave and I went to the bar that we first met in and ordered a beer. Oh my, I was not ready for that, but the second one went down a lot faster. Finally it was 2pm and we could go get our paella, the good stuff Dave had told me abou the first time I was there- no tiny crabs, actually I ordered the rabbit version, as my stomach really couldn’t handle fish at that moment. We ordered another beer with lunch. Then Dave had to go teach a class and I wandered around Valencia for a bit more, dragging my suitcase behind me. I had another beer at the train station and thought, perfect, I’ll be able to sleep the whole way home. But then somebody committed suicide on the tracks, so the trains was delayed by two hours, and I had to stay awake for it, then my buzz was gone so I was up the entire time on the train. Ugh.

I made it home at 11pm with barely enough time to shower and change for Andre’s going away party. I was tired, but caught my second wind around 3am, just in time for the bars to close. Thankfully Marshall has an apartment so we moved the party there. I once again got home between 5 and 6 am, oh and let me tell you how well I slept that morning.