   
BarkellWH
Posts: 3459
Joined: Jul. 12 2009
From: Washington, DC
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 RE: San Fermin encierro (in reply to Morante)
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In 1965, while serving in the U.S. Air Force in Germany, I spent one month (straddling July/August) on leave, two weeks of which were in Spain, I spent the entire first week (July 7-14) in Pamplona at the Fiesta de San Fermin, attending the festivities, watching the corrida, and each morning at 8:00am watching the running of the bulls. While most of the runners were young men of Navarre (the province of which Pamplona is the capital), there were quite a few were drunken Americans and Europeans.
The entrance to the bull ring boasts a bust of Ernest Hemingway, who did so much to put the Fiesta on the map with his book "The Sun Also Rises." I had not only read "The Sun Also Rises" long before, but Hemingway was my introduction to the history and technique of the Corrida with his "Death in the Afternoon," where I first read of the great Belmonte and other legendary matadors.
After the week at the Fiesta in Pamplona, I went to Madrid for a week, much of which was spent wandering around in the Prado, one of the great museums of the world. I ended my leave with ten days in Nice, France, thus fulfilling my goal of swimming in the Mediterranean (although the beach at Nice is composed of small stones and pebbles, not sand). Also visited Monte Carlo, where Jacques Cousteau based himself as head of the Institute of Oceanography, and San Remo on the Italian Riviera. All in all, a marvelous experience for a young guy who grew up in Arizona.
It may be of interest to those unaware of it that the great Sabicas was born in Pamplona.
Bill
_____________________________
And the end of the fight is a tombstone white,
With the name of the late deceased,
And the epitaph drear, "A fool lies here,
Who tried to hustle the East."
--Rudyard Kipling
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