La Tomatina

La Tomatina. Equal parts terror and exhilaration mixed with 60 tonnes of over-ripe tomatoes and 20,000 Australians in yellow Fanatics t-shirts. After a sleepless night spent tossing and turning in excited expectation we rolled into the tiny village of Bunol on the fringes of Valencia and walked down the hill towards the town square. We promptly hit a wall of bodies swilling down litres of beer and sangria like it was water and deciding we could advance no further cracked open our one Euro cartons of Don Simon sangria, sauntered up a side alley off the main thoroughfare, and sat waiting for the festivities to kick into full swing. After two hours spent watching Spaniards ripping Australian womens’ already soaking shirts off and flinging them at unsuspecting spectators we started to think we had come to the wrong festival. But before long a rocket exploded in the distance, the crowd erupted with dancing, cries of “ole!”, and more spraying of beverages and the first of many body-crushing moments began as throngs of people forced their way down a narrow cobbled street towards the town square and the tomatoes.

After a further 20 minutes went by without any sign of tomatoes our early doubts began to reemerge. Finally we saw a large excavation truck inching its way through the hoards of spectators but sadly it appeared its precious cargo had already been offloaded. A further four empty trucks drove slowly past, crushing people up against the old rock walls as they passed before a truck bearing tomatoes made its way to us. Unfortunately by the time it arrived we were pushed up against a garage door with our arms so firmly pinned to our sides that we could barely throw a thing. We were hit however…many, many times by cocky Spaniards perched on the top of the truck like cowardly snipers. As the truck pulled away another rocked fired signalling the end of the throwing and the folks who had made it to the town square decided they’d had enough of the festivities and began pushing back the other way uphill.

We were in the midst of a human stampede; think Big Day Out but without the music to sweeten the blows. A few people lost their footing only to re-emerge blue in the face moments later. It was utter chaos. It is very rare that you find yourself in a situation where you are quite sure someone around you is going to die and there were a few occasions there where it could have been one of us. I am not sure if this happens every year but I think perhaps the strong Aussie dollar combined with Australian’s love of alcohol and inflicting pain on strangers created a perfect Tomatina storm and the tiny town was packed well beyond its capacity. One thing is for sure, I will never, ever forget the smell of rotten tomatoes combined with fear-tinged body odour.

After 15 minutes in Satan’s moshpit we emerged from the milieu rattled but unscathed and covered head to toe in tomatoe skins, pulp and seeds. Walking back up the hill towards Chloe we were filled with that adrenaline fuelled exhilaration that comes with surviving something so utterly insane and like hostage victims with Stockholm syndrome we found ourselves looking back lovingly on the event through cognitive dissonance coloured glasses. As the europop jangled through the streets and the revellers cleaned the remnants of the red fruit from their clothes we raised sangria filled plastic cups to the hot blue Spanish sky and thanked the gods for La Tomatina.

(Photos for this post were sourced from news.com.au as our camera was safely stowed away inside Chloe to prevent tomato damage)

Stinge

Travelling always brings out a person’s true colours… or exacerbates colours they already proudly wear. Cam and I are pretty good travelling buddies but there remains one point of contention; Stinge versus Extravagance.

I am Extravagance and Cam is Stinge, but as I am writing this, I have the unfair advantage of being able to explain myself. While I really do enjoy lovely wine and if given the choice, I would probably eat more grandly than I can afford, I am quite able to restrain this tendency for the greater good. The fact that I kicked around in one grubby pair of black cons for the 6 months prior to our departure is surely a testament to that. I already knew Stinge was frugal, valiantly choosing a slightly less materialistic and indulgent path than most, what I didn’t realise, was how far a Stinge on a budget could push this tendency.

Soon after we picked up our precious little Chloe, Stinge quickly noticed a function on the dash showing our instant and averaged fuel economy. A combination of technology and money saving! A Stinge’s delight! Forget driving on the other side of the road, on the wrong side of the car, with lunatic Italians trying to kill us; focus at all times was to be shared between the road and the fuel consumption. I was immediately frustrated, knowing such close monitoring could only end badly. We experimented with this little gadget, going up hills in 5^th, rolling down the terrifyingly twisted and narrow Amalfi road of death in neutral, balancing a 90km/ hour speed maintenance on the mad Euro motorway… And then Stinge found Cruise Control. What a discovery! No unnecessary breaking or accelerating, a Stinge’s dream! So I sat and watched as Stinge drove his space ship, flicking buttons, checking levels- current fuel consumption, litres of petrol left, average fuel consumption so far… switch cruise control on, recheck fuel consumption, drop speed a touch, cruise control on again, check fuel consumption again… If I wasn’t so caught up in the hilarious stinginess of it all, I would be marvelling at the dexterity. But Stinge really came into his own when a squeal of delight burst through his concentrated, calculating lips as the average fuel consumption dropped from 7.8 L/100Km to 7.7! Then eventually 7.7 to 7.6… etc. Each time I have been regaled with high five’s and a little happy dance. A work of Stinge genius!

But Stinge is a stubborn and determined beast, and his talents at further reducing the petrol consumption didn’t stop there. We’re both tough Aussie kids, and like the quietly aspiring hippies we secretly think we are, we generally dislike air conditioning. I rage against my poor parents every summer when the aircon flicks on at 9am. But, there is a point. Especially in a car. Driving through glorious Croatia, with the Adriatic glittering pure turquoise beneath us, and the blistering sun, shooting through the window like a shard of hot metal trying brand us, I felt it was time to test out the other ‘mod cons’ of Chloe, and busted out the aircon. I should have realised how this would grossly affect the fuel economy scheme. Stinge shot daggers across the car. The aircon was quickly disabled and the sweat silently continued to flow. Stinge’s poor back was drenched, my shoulder was turning a pretty shade of purple and Chloe’s interior was ready to fry an egg, but we doggedly drove on, along motorways, through dusty side streets and down blinding coastal roads; air conditioning off. I tried once or twice out of pure desperation to turn it on, sometimes it stayed that way, on one occasion for a full five minutes! But often as my hand hovered over the sweet ‘on’ button, it was quickly swatted away. I have to give it to him, Stinge was suffering too. One day in a fit of outrage and exasperation, I decided to take a stand. I took off my dress, and sat in the passenger seat stony faced in my bra and undies, I thought this may shock Stinge into action, we were on a motorway afterall, with perverted truck drivers and dirty Italian men in their black Audi’s flying past us eyes glued to Chloe’s interior. But to my dismay, Stinge was delighted! So away we sped, Stinge with one eye on the fuel consumption, the other on my cleavage.

I could continue to regale you with tales of bread and cheese for more meals than I’d dare tell a health professional (the cheapest and most palatable meal available in Europe, a Stinge victory!), and stories from slimy, scary campsite bathrooms, but to be fair, Stinge is not only saving himself money, he is saving my hard earned pennies too. And our budget is outrageously tight. Stinge is also very self-sacrificing, he allows me my gelati and sangria, often going without himself. Perhaps another Stinge technique, but a very generous one. He even let me have the aircon on for a full trip the other day (it was 35 degrees, we’d been battling with tents and blaring sun for too many days… and fuel in Spain is significantly cheaper).

Funnily enough, though Stinge is brilliantly intelligent, far more so than Extravagance, he isn’t great with numbers. So while he carefully plots to save, I am the one keeping the budget and numbers in my head all day… though tempting , it is a power that Extravagance doesn’t abuse… often. Plus I’ve found his weakness, red wine. Stinge and extravagance have finally found common ground.

To be continued.

I heart Gaudi

I am skipping a large section of our trip here but I feel that enough shite literature has been written about Tuscany and we don’t need to add to the pile. The light is golden, the wine is fantastic and the tomatoes are “booodifooool”…enough said. We crossed the boarder into France via a brief stopover in Cinque Terra to be welcomed by flash flooding and chaos forcing us to escape north into Provence. After three days driving through lavender and musk scented fields and gorging ourselves sick on the local speciality “chevre” and “vin rouge” we headed south and crossed the boarder into Cataluñan Espange.

Some countries, like people, just feel right and after spending so long in uptight, superstitious, guilt-ridden, closed-minded Italia, Spain felt like a breath of fresh air. Our first port of call was a craggy, ancient, white-washed fishing village on the Costa Brava called Cadaques. Home to Salvador Dali for many years, the eccentric painter’s bohemian and anarchistic streak has left an indelible mark on this town with beatniks, hippies, fringe dwellers and outcasts flocking to soak up a bit of it’s rugged charm. After two lazy days spent basking in the sun we packed up Chloe and headed south for Barcelona. It wasn’t long before we were staring up at our first Gaudi structure in awe and with cultish admiration.

Before I came to Barcelona I ashamedly knew very little about the great man or his buildings but I am now a card-carrying Gaudian. For years I have wondered why we insist on

surrounding ourselves with boring straight edges, encasing ourselves in ridged boxes and neglecting the wondrous and liberating curves and spirals of the natural world. I naively assumed it wasn’t possible to build in a manner that reflected the freedom and wisdom of nature but here in front of me where all these magnificent structures proving me wrong! Never in my life have I seen something built by man that matches the awe-inspiring beauty of nature but I must say that Gaudi’s Sagrada Familia comes very close. Walking into the cathedral I felt a spine-tingling rush of excitement as I looked up and realised that this colossal structure was designed to resemble a living, breathing rain forest built entirely from concrete, iron, glass and stone. A catholic cathedral designed as a tribute to the power, wonder and glory of nature…who’d have guessed?!

My newfound positive regard for the religious institution was, however, short-lived. Our trip to Montserrat, an ancient but still-functioning monastery set atop a limestone promontory left me with a bitter taste in my mouth. Throngs of Catholics make the pilgrimage to this sacred site to touch or kiss the head of the “black Madonna”, a metal statue of the Virgin Mary holding baby Jesus. Sitting in the basilica of Montserrat for a mere ten minutes we saw at least a hundred people, one after the other kiss the head of this statue. We also witnessed several people holding their hands over a bush

in the centre of a square as if willing the magical plant to heal them. Deciding it was all a bit too much for us we headed for our car via the shop to get some bread for lunch. I handed two bread rolls to the shop assistant who put them through the register and asked for 4 euros. Was the bread hand-made by the monks themselves with holy water and wheat grown on consecrated land? In any other town or city this bread would have cost 70 cents at the most. We politely walked away from the purchase and took a final look around the shop, which can best be described as a MacCatholic outlet. “I love Montserrat” t-shirts, mugs, fridge magnets, pencils and pens, framed photos of the Pope outside the monastery, DVDs and CDs of mass services at the basilica, pieces of relics, photos of relics…you name it, they sold it. I couldn’t help but think…where does God come into all of this and how can monks living only meters away from this outlet of mass consumerism ever hope to detach from the material world? I guess if some of it goes into funding the still to be completed Sagrada Familia…who cares right???

The Week in Review

We are sitting on the grass in Bled, a little town north of Lubjljana, Slovenia, relaxing after a day spent hiking through the surrounding pine tree lined hills and swimming out to a church in the middle of the clearest lake I have seen in my life. Slovenia is a mixture of Austria and the South-Island of NZ. You expect a yodelling Bilbo Baggins dressed in lederhosen to stroll out of the woods at any moment. This is the perfect place to decompress after a whirlwind tour of New York, Rome, Pompei, the Amalfi Coast, and south-west coast of Croatia. Rome was the ideal antidote to NYC. New Yorkers are uptight about everything and Romans are so relaxed they don’t even have the energy to indicate or move out of the way whilst driving at 200Km an hour down a one-way street the wrong way. My two favourite memories of Rome: 1) a picnic of mozzarella, basil, tomatoes, and bread with red wine at sunset on the Spanish steps; 2) A loud, young American bloke walking up steps near the colosseum asking his mates “Are these the steps Jesus walked on…?”.

We picked up our little silver Renault Clio which we have since dubbed “Chloe” in the outskirts of Rome and hit the open road…at 10Kms an hour down quiet side streets until I figured out how to drive on the right side of the road whilst changing gears with the WRONG hand. Interestingly I have since developed a strange habit of saying “up” when I mean “down”, “less” when I mean “more” and “hello” when I mean “goodbye” (fortunately “ciao” means both!). On the second day despite warnings and horror stories from family, friends and local Italians we hopped back in Chloe and took on the narrow winding roads that snake along the cliffs of the Amalfi coast. Lize has coined a term for such reckless abandon, ”Cambition”. This was cambition to the max and although we were unable to afford to stay in the area, the fleeting glimpes I caught out the window of pastel coloured fishing villages anchored to limestone cliffs were well worth the stress of keeping our pretty, little car dent-free. It is hard not to take Italian drivers’ apparent desire to run you of the road personally especially when they profess to love the “simple, slow, beautiful life”. A head-on collision is neither simple, slow nor beautiful! Perhaps it is the French license plate?

After failing to find anywhere to stay in Amafli, Chloe doggedly drove on, winding us through what we later called the “ghetto of Amalfi” and spat us out on a massive motorway. We suddenly realised at 8:30pm that we were in the middle of nowhere, heading nowhere, with no place to stay and no light or time to find anything. So we reigned Chloe in, dragged her kicking and screaming into a gas station, pulled out the map and eventually fled north to the safety of sleepy Pompei, the city that rests at the base of Mt Vesuvius. One thousand and nine hundred years ago this city was buried in ash and immaculately preserved by the eruption of the now dormant volcano that towers over it. The next morning as we walked through the unearthed ruins of the ancient roman settlement Lize and I were overwhelmed by the realisation that the fossilised remains of Pompei’s inhabitants on display were once walking on the same cobblestones, drinking from the same fountains, and staring up at the same hot Mediterranean sun as us.

We then set off across the middle of the country to Bari to catch an overnight ferry to Dubrovnik, Croatia. Again, miraculously, at the end of the trip Chloe emerged unscathed from the guts of the painfully narrow holding decks and we drove into Dubrovnik bleary eyed from a restless night of sleep in the open aired deck surrounded by snoring, balding Croatian women, filthy backpackers, and Panini munching Italians.

I love Croatia. I don’t want to divulge much more because I don’t want to bias those of you who have not been in any way. Come to this country and experience it for yourself. It is paradise…and it is cheap which an old scrooge like me loves even more! Some quick highlights: 1) Climbing up cliffs that border an ancient fortress and then jumping into the cool aquamarine Adriatic; 2) Dirt cheap seafood bonanza overlooking a walled city surrounded by the ocean with mountains stacked up like toblerone pieces in the background. 3) Watching drunk Croatians dance in a discotec…think Eurovision meets Borat in very tight and short lycra. Next stop: Tuscany!!!

New York Yankers

People watching:

1) Voodoo Broadway obsesso man – while we were waiting for the West Side Story front row ticket lottery to be drawn this old guy in Jesus sandals and chinos that hadn’t seen a washing machine in a good year with a beer belly that would rival old Boony’s started rocking back and forth with his half-closed eyes rolled back in his head and hands facing palms down murmuring what we can only imagine was some sort of voodoo spell. We won the tickets. He didn’t. Voodoo foiled.

2) Met meditation man – We were outside the Egyptian Temple of Dendur in the Metropolitan Museum of Art when a dreadlocked dude in fisherman’s pants sitting cross-legged in front of the temple started meditating. There is meditation and then there is freaky deaky “I believe Darth Vader raped my fairy god-mothers’ sister and now I must wage a war of vendetta against the evil Serath and his minions” meditation. This guy was clearly the latter and he started OMing very…very loudly. He then started “feeling the energy” of the temple by putting his hands out in front of him. At this point we decided to make a beeline for the exit.

3) Flat mate – We were staying in a friend of Lize’s apartment and her flat mate Tim dressed in fluoro pink shoes and string singlets was an absolute scream. A selection of Tim quotes: “I go to the solarium at least once a week…does that make me tanorexic?” “I’m gay…not going to the gym is not an option!”

4) Subway slurry – A girl with a heavy Bronx accent wearing denim and lycra that left little to the imagination and earrings you could hoolahoop with had a poor young guy in naval garb cornered in the train. Like your typical seppo she was talking non-stop shit and this poor guy’s face was a brighter shade of pink than Tim’s shoes. When he finally escaped she followed him saying “I might seem like I am stalking you but I am actually going shoe shopping here.” We were in china town.

5) Malevolent market man – we were sauntering through Union Square markets when an old dude yelled at us in a thick yankee accent “make up your mind where you are going” before rushing past us at breakneck speed. It appears New Yorkers don’t even have time to be considerate on the weekend.

My final verdict on New York…fantastic except for the natives!