It's good to be back in Italy. It's hot, sunny, humid, the food is great and everyone seems to be in a good mood.

Ok, much to catch up on:

Nájera Fiesta

Nájera is a small village near to Eduardo's home city of Logroño. We went there for the main day of their Fiesta, the feast of St Peter and St Paul, just after I had given my talk to the University of La Rioja where Edu works. We'd been warned to wear old clothes, so we ran home to change into shorts and old t-shirts, and in my case sandals, and then sprinted to make the bus at the bus station. We just made it, which is always a good way to start a Fiesta. In Nájera, we met the four girls Eduardo had mysteriously lined up for us to spend the day with, and their instant reaction was to point at my sandals and wag their fingers. Oh dear. At this point I looked around the assembled crowd of thousands of potential Fiesta people and noticed that nobody, absolutely nobody, was wearing anything but shoddy old trainers. Ah. Fortunately, one of the girls had some spare trainers in her flat nearby, and generously gave them to me, and with a bit of swapping I ended up with a pair big enough to wear. So all set.

The fiesta starts with the brass band playing three tunes which you get to hear about 10 000 times by the end of the day. The band are mostly in their sixties and play from a bandstand while everybody links arms and dances in large circles around them shouting along with the music. Then, the band has to march, playing the same 3 tunes, from the bandstand through the narrow alleyways in the old part of the village to the other square, where they will form up and play again. Simple - but not if all the other fiesta people have to squeeze through the alleyways as well, and particularly not if about half of the young men are linking arms and pushing everybody back, while the other half are linking arms and trying to push everybody forwards. Now you're glad you're not wearing sandals, as your feet are trodden on for the 67th time. It takes about 3 hours for the band to go 200 metres, and all the while they must play louder and louder if they want to get through. All this goes on in the heat of the afternoon, with much drinking of beer and wine and calimochos (that's spelt wrong - wine and coke, anyway) and the residents who live in flats with windows over the alleyways chuck buckets of cold water on the grateful revellers underneath. This might sound crazy, but it's actually great fun. Really great fun. And you can slip out of the melee and go into a bar for a cool beer, then charge back in again, it's all very friendly and at the end, all the people who were organising the push forwards are hugging all the guys who organised the push backwards, and everyone's cheering the band who managed to keep playing and probably lost 3 kilos of fluids each in sweat.

However, that's only the start of the fiesta. After that things get really crazy. You go into bars and wonder why all the TVs and speakers are wrapped up in dustbin bags, and why thick polyurethane sheeting covers the bottles and kit behind the bar, and then about half an hour later, drink starts flying all over the place, people are throwing water over each other, and then wine, beer, coke, anything. The bars are rammed with people, drinks are being passed miles over people's heads back across the room, you typically order a round of small strong drinks, like Orujo, and a round of cold refreshing long drinks for drinking/throwing in equal proportions. Before long, everyone is soaked in beer, the floor is an inch deep in a strange mixed liquid, your old trainers are half destroyed, everyone is dancing and singing, and running to the next bar for more of the same. Very quickly you lose track of time, and in my case, forget that you can't speak the language. I made several good friends without any actual verbal communication, including someone who gave me his hat. One place, a sort of village co-operative, is handing out free wine - yes free - in those huge glass drinking horns where you have to hold it high in the air above you and try to swallow as you pour it down your throat. This is of course almost impossible for a first timer, but everyone was very generous in their appreciation of my rather weak effort. I had a certain novelty value being the only foreigner there. The party carried on with conga dancing, stupid jokes, shouting, more soaking each other in drink, more bars, peculiar drinks, podium dancing, confusion of similar-looking brothers with each other (with hilarious consequences) until eventually we were given a lift home to Logroño, exhausted but strangely elated. Anyway, the Spanish, at least in this part of Spain, really know how to have a good time. Really. If a Spanish friend ever invites you to their village Fiesta, away from the English-speaking tourist fest in Pamplona, then go immediately. Do not delay. Pay whatever easyjet are asking. You won't regret it.

Of course I have no photos of the Fiesta. Only a fool would take a digital camera into that. I didn't even see anyone taking photos, which is kind of cool. What goes at the Fiesta, stays at the Fiesta.