Spain in My Ass

Since leaving France, Kelly and I have spent our remaining days of freedom (aka unemployment) in Spain between San Sebastian, Bilbao and Valencia.  This dwindling time has been spent on sandy beaches, drinking sangria and mostly doing nothing in general.  I was surprised, however, at the varying ideas of what 'Sangria' is, even in Spain.  In one bar you'd simply get fruit filled wine, while at the very next bar the bartender would mix a bottle of Smirnoff Ice, some orange Fanta and top it off with a splash of red wine.  Sick.  I'm not even ashamed to say I drank it.  Certainly it will not be the worst thing I've put in my mouth this year (insert dirty joke here...pervs).  Plus, at the end of a long unemployed year you won't find me throwing away a drink, especially when paying with the Euro.  

All of this inactivity has all been in preparation for the crescendo of this trip: La Tomatina.  Tomatina has been on my bucket list since before I even knew what a bucket list was.  To give you an abreviated description of the festival (you won't be getting any historical facts here), a bunch of drunk assholes (see above picture) put on their best all white outfit (not the flattering number I imagined it would be) and head to Bunol, Spain.  The festivities comence at 9:00 AM where anyone who is brave enough attempts to scratch and claw their way up a very tall and greased pole (apparently there is no official height requirement for this, any old log will do) in hopes of seizing the coveted grand prize topping this slippery log: a ham.  The obvious choice for a tomato festival.  This moment of glory with ham in hand, heralds the start of the biggest food fight in the world.  120 TONS of tomatoes are trucked into the city for this annual, hour long, free-for-all.  The only rule being you are required to crush the tomatoes for safety reasons before hurling them at a fellow festival participants.  Sometimes I forgot.

The following is how Tomatina played out for me.  First off, staying anywhere close to the village is near impossible this time of year.  This means that Kelly and I had to wake up at 6:30 AM to get ready and start drinking.  I don't necessarily recommend boxed wine for breakfast, but that's what happened whether we liked it or not.  We then were whisked away on a bus full of other early risers/boozers/assholes to find the mystical greased pole.  In a town teeming with drunk tourists, asking for directions to the greased pig pole was a bit of a challenge.  Though I was prepared with my trusty translator Kelly, "greased pig pole" even escaped her Spanish vocabulary after living in Mexico for a year.  I guess the Mexicans aren't as versed as the Spaniards when it comes to lubing up swine festooned timber.  When the pig is finally liberated, truck load upon truck load of tomatoes are dumped into the streets of Bunol where the culinary combat kicked off.  It was just as exciting as an adult food fight sounds...times a million.  

I couldn't stop smiling if I wanted to, which was a disadvantage when the tomatoes were being chucked directly into my grill.  At a time like this  it was best not to think about the contents of the produce that had just been scraped off dirty city streets, especially since I too had just relieved myself around the corner.  (Don't judge me, the boxed wine made me do it.)  Tomatoes ended up in every fucking crevasse.  Literally.  I'd be upset about the copious amounts of tomato paste produced in my ass crack that day if I hadn't spent about half the fight strategically shoving tomatoes down other peoples' pants.  Hey, sometimes my throwing arm got tired and things got creative.  

Another fun fact about tomatoes: the acidity will take off any waterproof sunscreen you lathered on your body and face that morning.  Not that Coppertone should have specified that "tomato juice" does not count as water, I just wished I would have taken that into consideration before crisping in the sun for several hours.  Damn.  All that time spent getting rid of  tan lines on that nude beach in San Sebastian was all for naught.  Someone please tell me sports bra tans have come into fashion stateside since we've been gone.  

I even sacrificed my fancy camera for this momentous life event.  Yes, extra money was paid for the shock-proof, water-proof  and all around Krista-proof camera, but I never underestimate my ability to fuck shit up.  So I gambled with my camera's life in order to document this glorious event for you (yes, you Ramey P. Marshall).  My rationale being that should my camera go to Kodak Heaven, then at least it had made it through an epic year-long around the world trip and had seen more things than most cameras do, documenting inconsequential birthday parties and such.  In all my excitement, I did however think to buy a new memory card and leave the precious memories of this year safely in the hotel room (not to toot my own horn, but Beep-Beep!).  I'll risk the camera, but that memory card is pure gold.  Pray to god I like you enough to show you the uncensored slide show when I get home.  Highly unlikely, I don't even want to remind myself about some of my recent shenanigans.

Well a day that starts early, ends early and the nice thing (terrible, awful thing) about starting a drinking bender before 7:00 AM is that the hangover is at full force just before dinnertime.  The trouble is that while I would normally be asleep during the eye of the hangover storm,  I was actually fully awake for the hangover of a lifetime; a pounding headache, being sunburned beyond recognition and after three showers, I was still crusted in tiny bits of tomato shrapnel.  Luckily, the extra recovery hours made sleeping it off a snap and I felt fleet footed and fancy free the next day for the bus ride out of town.  Here's to ending things with a bang...or a SMASH!

The camera lives!!!

Gay Paris

Perhaps not as gay as our recent journey to Amsterdam Gay Pride, but gay nonetheless.  Or perhaps it's just that all the men in this country yeild that impression due to their liberal use of capris pants, v-neck sweaters and their toy poodle companions.  Surely it's the reason I didn't find a French husband.  Other stereotypes shockingly held true in Paris as well.  Most obviously was that every man, woman and child does indeed carry a baguette with them everywhere and at all times.  Another factual convention being that all the women here are actually supermodel thin.  How these two seemingly contradictory customs can simultaneously exist might only be explained in the other underlying messages in Dan Brown's "The Da Vinci Code".  

Since we're on the topic of France and bread products I should mention that I am allergic to gluten (and dairy to make everything extra stupid) and being in Paris is like being repeatedly slapped in the face since you have to pass a patisserie every 10 feet.  The onslaught of fresh baked aromas was more than my poor olfactory system could handle.   Kelly also happens to be a fellow glutard, so at least we could bitch about it together.  However, after 10 brutal days of this French torture it was time to put an end to Paris's confection oppression.  We researched the best god damn bakery in Paris and marched ourselves down there early one morning to catch the chocolate croissants straight out of the oven.  After saying a prayer to the gastrointestinal gods I proceeded to have a brief and intense love affair with said baked good.  For the other victim's  protection, I won't disclose the details of Kelly's own personal experience.  Was it worth it?  Ask me when my bowel movements have returned to a state of semi-soundness.    

Enough about me, let's talk about Kelly's family.  Oh I wish I had some good gossip to indulge you, but unfortunately they are lovely.  We stayed with Kelly's dad who is spending a few months in France.  He was nicer to me than any sane person should be to a complete hobo.  He let us monopolize the washing machine, eat his groceries and invade his personal space in general.  He continued to spoil us by taking us to every museum I'd ever dreamed of going to in Paris.  It was the first time I've lived the high life since we started this trip (as if I normally live a extravagant lifestyle when I'm back home).  It was also just nice to get to know Jeff.  Kelly and I have been friends for 11 years, but the most time I've spent with him prior to Paris is when he dropped us off at the airport last September.  And dare I say he got to know me too.  Perhaps more that he wanted, but I'd to think we are close now.  Especially after the day he came home and I was doubled over in pain from a failed high kick attempt.  Jeff walked in the door to us blasting pop music at an inappropriate volume for an old French apartment building at the end of an epic high kicking competition (which I obviously lost) thus my usual colorful language spilling forth as you readers might have come to expect.  Hopefully he liked getting to know me too.  Maybe?

I'd like to think France was where my true tourist spirit shined (this primarily made possible by Jeff Brittan).  Eiffel Tower; check.  The Louvre; check.  Arch de Triomphe; check.  Drinking before noon; double check.  We even got to see the Notre Dame Cathedral, which I've been lusting to see for ages now for it's Gothic architecture, flying buttresses and grand scale stained glass.  Plus, who doesn't want to get a picture of their best friend posing as the Hunchback of Notre Dame in front of THE Notre Dame?  A group of Italian tourists were highly impressed as I helped Kelly position her bag under her shirt for the perfect hump effect.  I can go home now feeling like I've properly done France.  

Just hanging with my new buddy Jeff

Fly Like an Eagle

This week marked a momentous event in this trip; Kelly and I traveled separately for the first time in 11 months.  Hold the phone, nobody call People Magazine just yet.  We're absolutely fine, you can get an official statement from our publicists this afternoon.  Kelly's dad is currently on holiday in France and she took off to Paris, where I'd meet her later, for some quality family time.  Plus, Ramey still had another week of vacation so we had some extra time to galavant about a bit.  I'll admit it felt a bit strange ("a bit" = there may some serious codependency issues to deal with at a later date) being separated from my constant companion.  In the End, I think we managed swimmingly.   

There were six days to kill and 380,820 square miles of Western Europe to consider.  Neither Ramey or I had been to Switzerland, so in a very complex desicion making process that took us precious seconds to decide, we concluded it was Switzerland ahoy!  To save save time (and oddly money as it worked out) we rented a car for the travel flexibility necessitated when you are traveling several thousand kilometers in a short amount of time.  In order to start our adventure we had to hop on the German Autobahn...THE Autobahn.  The autobahn's fast and furious reputation nearly slipped my mind.  Frankly, the autobahn itself seemed like a mythical creature, something I dreamed about speeding down as a child (I was a weird kid).  The difference being I always dreamed I was ripping down the freeway in a Lamborghini Diablo instead of a Opel Astra that ended up pooping out at 160 kmh (calm down parentals, that's only kilometers).  The Ford Escort that I drove in high school (and admittedly most of my adult life) went faster than that.  Still it felt kind of invigorating and free.  These sensations usually only felt when I wasn't getting passed by a BMW going thrice my speed. 

In a few short days we rallied through Zurich; Lake Geneva; Mont Blanc in the French Alps and Chablis, France.  I won't bore you with flowery words describing how gorgeous the country side is in this part of the world.  You know it was fucking beautiful.  After spending an interesting night couchsurfing in Zurich with a bunch of college boys who were obsessed, in a serious way, with David Hasslehoff (and I thought the Germans only had the weird fascination with the Hoff), we gradually made our way to the French Alps.  We spent the day hiking to Bossons Glacier, a severely vertical climb that threatened cat-size capacity of my lungs in their current state (god knows if I'll ever fully recover from Gay Pride in Amsterdam), however, our labors turned out to be fruitful.  The view was one in a billion and the sweet, ice-cold, delicious glacier water was a nice reward in the end.  At one point, as we were standing at the glacier overlooking the world, we had to laugh thinking about all the people (yes, you) who were slaving away at work that day.  Laugh it up we did.  Imagine us on top of the picturesque French Alps manically laughing, imagining all of you at work, our voices echoing out over the pristine, snow capped mountains.  Said it just to be a dick.  Though this statement was made with the horrifying realization that I will be home in a short month frantically searching for one of those so-called "jobs".  

After our alpine adventure we searched for accommodation in a little town nestled in the foothills of Mont Blanc.  Someone forgot to tell them that the hobos were coming to town.  A bustling ski resort town in the winter, Chamonix looks like every other posh resort town you've ever seen in the movies (or in real life for you non-hobo types).  The lady at information was caught off guard when we inquired about a youth hostel.  She told us there was indeed a hostel but it was way out of town and, "you know you have to sleep in a dorm...with other people".  Well, the "out of town" hostel ended up being a seven minute walk from the city center and was nicer than a lot of places I've rested my head this year.  The other problem with these resort towns is that they seem to offer an endless number of extreme sports.  Somehow these towns also make these elite-priced activities seem like a wise investment in highly valued vacation memories.  I guess the market valuation for paragliding must be very attractive right now because I soon found myself running off the side of a mountain.

Oddly, throwing myself off the mountainside in the French Alps wasn't even slightly scary.  I had expected the same mounting anxiety and subsequent freakout I had experienced when I went skydiving.  Paragliding was a much more peaceful encounter and it mostly felt like I was a soaring eagle (that is if eagles wore huge, ridiculous looking smiles on their faces while they were flying).  The half hour of floating over France, including the very same glacier we had hiked the day before, was over much too soon.  I could have stayed up there all day.  The only way to recover from the devastating adrenaline withdrawal was, obviously, to drown our sorrows in several bottles of Chablis...in Chablis, France.  Sorry, just have to squeeze in the dick comments while I can.  

Look Ma, I'm flying!

Shimmer, Sparkle and Shine

I have a secret.  Kelly and I are not actually the great hobos we make ourselves out to be.  All this time I have strategically kept from you that we have spent the last several months preparing for one of our favorite holidays; Gay Pride.  I may be a dress wearing, lumberjack chasing, straight female (pay no attention to my previous references to my rugby career), but I LOVE me a shiny, slutty gay pride parade.  Kelly and I have sacrificed too many precious cubic inches and kilograms of backpack capacity (a cardinal vagabond sin) in order to collect the finest spandex, false eyelashes, fish nets, glitter and more glitter.  We have amassed an impressively eclectic collection of flare from around the world for a mere three day celebration.  Yes, it is by all means necessary, and probably a rule, to have a different outfit everyday.  Reservations were made way back when we were in Vietnam (whoa, remember Vietnam way back in February?) and finally the week was upon us.  We had one last stop this week before the festivities began; lovely Hamburg, Germany (or so we were told).

Poor, poor Hamburg.  I am sorely sorry I neglected it, but it was a busy week of working out, completing the finishing touches on our costumes and watching The Olympics!  I know people disagree about the importance placed on The Games.  Some people could care less and others think they're a waste of time (this includes most Swedes I've met).  Well, they're wrong.  The Olympics might be my favorite thing in the world (behind a warm chocolate chip cookie, obviously) and our hostel was playing the adrenaline spiking competitions non-stop.  This made out to be the perfect background (and often foreground) for costume crafting.  Further in our defense, the weather totally sucked that week.  So really Hamburg needs to take some of the blame here too.

Enough blabbering about Hamburg, the city I virtually know nothing about, and fast forward to Amsterdam Pride 2012; reportedly one of the best parties in the world.  This was about to be the best party of the year and sure to be our sparkle Mecca.  And then things got even better.  Gasp!  Better than gays and glitter?  Gays, glitter and my best friend Ramey!  Ramey, being one of my more organizationally challenged (also see disaster) friends had been suggesting that she was going to try to meet me in Amsterdam.  My expectations were low considering she is in grad school, working, taking care of her sick grandmother and, well, see my previous comment.  My low expectations, however, were advantageous because my friend the disaster made it happen!  (This may be the most exclamation points I have ever used in a paragraph).  I haven't seen my best friend in 11 months and it was an airport reunion to rival all airport reunions (and I didn't even have flowers)...and then things got even better!  Gays, glitter, Ramey and San Juanita.  San Juanita (AKA San J - she totally loves this nickname) is significantly more delinquent than Ramey when it comes to getting it together (really) and one of my other favorite people in the world.  How Ramey convinced AND then got San J to buy a plane ticket across the world a mere two weeks before departing is beyond my comprehension.  It is something that can only be described as a Gay Pride miracle.

Amid all the excitement I failed to mention that we had also convinced Weird Kate and some of her other recently released Peace Corps cronies to join us.  So, the eight of us squeezed into a rental apartment reserved for four people.  Cozy and sparkly.  It wasn't the occupancy the renters should have worried about.  Not many people think to enforce a No Glitter rule.  At least that apartment will never be dull again.  Unfortunately for them we were prepared for the second coming of the Dark Ages with the armory of glitter we were packing.  This is in addition to our shimmering clothing, metallic hair extensions, glimmering eyeshadows and shinning personalities.  Of course we cleaned, but it is a fact that glitter is the herpes of the costume world.  You can never get rid of it.  I do like to think that we left a permanent mark on Amsterdam though.

Yay Gays!