The Next Weekend- Monday

This was the final day of La Merce. We decided to celebrate by consuming unholy amounts of churros and watching the best fireworks show ever.

By our apartment there was a little carnival set up that had a churro stand filled with every kind of churro you could imagine. There were churros dipped in chocolate, mini churros, giant chocolate churros stuffed with custard, giant regular churros stuffed with chocolate cream, churros stuffed with strawberry cream, churros dipped in chocolate with strawberry cream. You get the picture. My arteries are clogging just thinking about that night. Andrew went plain and simple with a quarter kilogram of plain churros while I decided on the chocolate dipped churro stuffed with custard.

As we walked over to the fireworks, I actually found myself eating some of Andrew's plain churros to alleviate the heaviness of my churro. What does that tell you? I don't know why I thought dough deep fried in cheap oil and then coated with waxy chocolate before being stuffed with custard that has been sitting out in the sun all day would be a good idea. Andrew ended up debating if giving the rest of his churros to a homeless man would be seen as an act of mercy or an act of cruelty given the health problems they would be sure to incur.

The only thing that took our minds off of the grease coating our digestive systems was the best fireworks show ever. I'm still debating if it really was the best fireworks show ever because Andrew and I did see a really good one over San Francisco Bay which was the best fireworks show ever up until that point. I'm not sure if this one trumps it or ties it. The show took place at the Magic Fountain, a giant fountain by the National Palace that puts on a water show set to music every weekend. I put up the photo above because you can see the palace and the fountain below the fireworks. The street surrounding the fountain was absolutely filled with people and speakers all along the street blasted the music that the fireworks were set to during the show.

My ability to describe fireworks is pretty lacking so I won't even try. There were a ton and they were almost always perfectly timed to the music. At the end of the show they just let loose with the loudest fireworks they had for quite a while. It looked like a war zone. With so many people in the plaza it took us nearly forty minutes just to walk a block or so but it was well worth it. And so ended La Merce. Now I can actually post normal blog entries about all the other boring stuff that makes up our life here, aren't you excited?

The Next Weekend- Sunday

Welcome to the wonderful world of stacking. Sunday afternoon was the Mati Casteller, or Human Castles Morning. I think it says something about the culture here that the Human Castles Morning began at about 1pm.

Sorry to drag this weekend on. I'm not a huge fan of my own writing and so I tend to avoid it if I can. Back to La Merce (the festival this was all a part of), on Sunday we were pretty excited to have a chance to see "stacking", as Andrew and I call it. This involves a huge group of people pushing against each other and getting as close as they can to form a base for the rest of the group to create human towers on. You can't tell from this photo, but the layer just below where the photo cuts off consists of a group two or three times the size of that bottom group you can see. I'm sure there about a hundred people in each stacking group.

We're not exactly sure if this is a competitive sport or just something to do. What we do know is that there are different formations that they try and we've seen them get as high as nine layers, if you count each of the little kids on top as a layer. The biggest and brawniest guys are in the second layer and then the people get smaller as you go up until at the very end one or two little kids wearing some frighteningly inadequate helmets shimmy up everyone to the top. As soon as they get up there they raise their hand and then start shimmying down everyone. The whole tower collapses by people crawling down each other until they're done. From what we've heard, stacking is something unique to Catalonia. No one else in Spain seems to be willing to put their smallest children atop a rather shaky tower of people about 40 ft high.

Later that night Andrew and I walked around the city and caught a few more concerts. The biggest one was a group from the UK called Travis which we'd first heard while we were in Cambridge. Apparently thousands of other people had heard them too because it was crowded enough to make even the most sane person quite claustrophobic.

The Next Weekend- Saturday

I don't know if you can tell what is going on in this picture-- I'll explain.

Saturday during the day we walked around the city and caught just a few of the things going on. Down at the harbor there was a large wine festival and market that we walked around. nothing terribly interesting until the Correfoc began.

The Correfoc, or Fire Run, is what you see in that picture there. It was described in the festival guide as consisting of "forty groups of 'devils' from in and around the city, as well as dragons and other fire beasts." Not terribly clear, but there was also a warning that mentioned wearing clothes that cover you head to toe, damp towels on your head, special goggles, and that there would be ambulances parked up and down the street, presumably well stocked with burn ointment.

We didn't really take this warning too seriously, having grown up in a society guided by Smokey the Bear and laws against reckless use of fire. Surely they wouldn't be so careless with fire as to endanger hundreds of people, right? Andrew and I got to the street where the Correfoc was taking place and tried to get us a fairly safe vantage point. We couldn't help but notice that there were several people who actually were covered head to toe. In fact most everyone was wrapping something around their hair to protect it. The street was absolutely filled with people so we found a spot on the sidewalk next to a building. We figured as the parade started the people in the street would clear off the street and onto the sidewalks and so it would get incredibly cramped.

As the parade started, that didn't happen. People stayed in the streets despite the fact that fire wielding performers were headed straight for them. I'm not quite sure how to describe it other than to refer you to the picture. There were people carrying wands that shot those sparks out over everyone. As they passed you on the street they would turn and spray the crowds on the sidewalk, just in case you thought you were safe. The braver people actually walked amongst the center of the fireworks. There were also some pretty cool dragons that came through breathing fire on everyone as well. One little girl standing next to us was so terrified she kept hiding under me and Andrew. She even pulled him back when he started to step away.

All the excitement was too much for Andrew to just stand by and watch so despite his lack of preventative clothing [edit by Andrew: I was wearing a hoodie that I pulled tight over my head, but my beard was probably still quite flamable], he got out amids the fireworks. I'm posting a video he took. All you can really see is that some guy runs straight for him with the fireworks and sprays him. The unfortunate thing is that you did hear the ambulances heading off to the hospital but the street was so crowded they couldn't get too far. After being sprayed with sparks several times we decided we'd taken our chances quite enough and headed out to catch some of the other concerts and things going on that night.