Edited: No Bull in Spain
I love editing; it makes manuscripts into cohesive stories. And it certainly made my book immensely better and more appealing for a vast audience. But in the process of editing, some really good stuff is throw to the floor for the greater good of the book. Rather than let these edited bits, pieces, and complete stories go to waste, I’m going to periodically post them here for anyone interested in reading more of the back stories to CBEP.
Chapter 1: Taiwan, a Bullfight, and an Abbey uses other parts of the edited piece copied below:
We, fresh and clean, having come straight from San Sebastian on the 8 p.m. bus, were entering an atmosphere we’d savored many times before – Spanish festivals; it was nothing new. Carnivale in Cadiz and Chipiona. Las Fallas in Valencia. Semana Santa and Feria in Seville. Even the milder Cruces de Mayo in Cordoba. We had and have always done our best to never miss a party or a cultural experience. Thankfully Spain offered both at once. And when we weren’t immersed in one of these extravagant expeditions, we filled our Seville nights with Flamenco, Bullfights, and Tapas crawls.
But here we were. Approaching a festival muy diferente. It had to be. It was the festival of legends: La Fiesta de San Fermines, el encierro, corriendo con los toros en Pamplona. We’d made it. We had really made it. After traveling the diagonal length of Europe in a week. A twenty-seven hour bus from Riga to Berlin. Two nights in Berlin. Overnight train to Paris. Two nights in Paris. Then the train to San Sebastian. Paris to San Sebastian? Actually, there is no such single train – that would have been too easy. An overnight from Paris to Bayonne. A connection from Bayonne, France to Irun, Spain, right on the border. And, finally, a commuter, slow-speed train from Irun to San Sebastian. We had made it.
We had really made it.
We’d made it to San Sebastian, secured and boarded our bus to Pamplona, and arrived at the holy festival that invites attendees to drink all night before running in front of six crazily pissed-off bulls and two herds of bullocks, the castrated bulls. They’re for calming their companions – possibly for guiding them also. Regardless, that adds up to a dozen 1000-1500lb wild animals with foot-long, curved and pointed horns running at full speed.
Have you ever seen a bull run at full speed? I know they’re enormous animals. They look like they might not be that fast. I thought this. Even imagined that maybe it would be possible to outrun one. This is a false and empty hope. It is absolutely not possible to outrun one. A bull running against a person, both running at full speed, will make that poor bastard look stationary.
The disadvantages to participating in such an event are clear from the outset. And that’s without considering the racecourse. I originally imagined a straightaway path. Straight? Oh, hell no. This is Europe. This is Spain. Straight streets don’t exist.
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