La Tomatina

for the win

Ever since I’ve opened a Spanish language textbook at the age of 16, and learned about la Tomatina – I always wanted to go; except the idea of going was constantly being pushed into the undetermined future. Until last year, when I and four of my friends set our vehicular sails for Buñol in the province of Valencia. We arrived on time to park on the outskirts of the pop=9,000 town. More than 30,000 fellow fighters walked to the center of the town with us, happily yelling at each other and laughing at the unsuspecting flip-flop wearers and camera-ready enthusiasts.

note that our shirts are white

First we got a bit of a squish session with the masses circa my Prague 2000 escape from Vaclavske Namesti along with 40,000 others. Then we moved to the front row (because we are lovable fighters), bewildered by the buildings covered in Tyvek or something similar, and watched 6 trucks slowly roll one after another, raining tomatoes on us little guys. It was on! Our goggles, €5 shoes with double laces and swimsuits didn’t help much, and the tomato juice still burnt the eyes and the skin, so we screamed Agua! Agua! to the gods above and it literally rained buckets from residential balconies. 

I got hit in the head so many times, and I scored some good shots myself. Our team fought some folks on the other side of the narrow street, tomato river kept getting deeper and deeper, people bathed in the tomato sauce, people screamed, shouted, took photos with their waterproof cameras, tried to fix their goggles only to get hit in the face. But more than anything, everyone had an absolutely unreal experience. You didn’t know that 120 tonnes of tomatoes can do this magic?

After a 90 minute battle that seemed to go on forever, we stumbled to the river and bathed, proud of ourselves, drained, feeling like the different people that we became and simply happy to be alive. We then drove to Valencia to swim in in the sea and feast on authentic paellas.

Filed under: the world eh , art, Europe, excitement, food, friends, fun time, Spain, tomatina, tomatoes, travels