Bullfight, Son!!!

Ok, so before I start this little entry I feel like I should preface the whole thing with some sort of warning in relation to what I’m about to write about. So here we go.

WARNING!
The following blog entry may be offensive and/or disturbing to some people. It includes pictures and word-age which may be disconcerting to the squeamish/animal lovers/little girls. However, it is no doubt a fantastic post describing what was quite possibly the most enjoyable day of my life that didn’t involve my kicking someone in the dome.

A’ight, with that out of the way, I’m now free to wallow in my own crapulence. So let’s do this. There was pretty much only one thing that I really wanted to do while studying abroad this semester. It had nothing to do with going on any trip to some country/place or even becoming fluent in this crazy language. I wanted to go to a bullfight. I gave a speech on such an activity my senior year in high school and became quite interested in the concept. And during my preparation for said speech, I stumbled upon a picture that was taken at a corrida de toros that was simply too epic to be ignored. The following isn’t the actual pic that I’m talking about, but it’s the same concept. The point with all this is that I had a miniature copy of this photo made and have kept it in my wallet ever since. People ask me sometimes how I can always be in such a good mood. Oftentimes I respond by taking out my cartera and saying, “Because I’m not this guy.”
So yeah, like 12 days ago or so I did some internet sleuthing on the matter of bullfighting in Spain and found that there was only one event left for the season. No doubt in my mind that I had to go. Problem: a lot of people don’t actually have a desire to see an animal get brutally slaughtered for sport (although, the meat is actually sold and such, so it’s not a waste – but brutal, yes). Thankfully my gangsta buddy down here, se llama Laura, was more than down to rock an activity like this.

So I booked the tickets for her and me. Now there’s six sections in the arena for seating. Lower level (tenido bajo) and upper level (tenido alto), and then those two are divided into whether the seats are in the sun, not so much in the sun, or in the sun for some of the time. I decided that I was going to rock the cheapest tickets and thus I ordered tenido alto in the sun, or “sol” if you will. 17.25 Euros a pop. Not too bad for something that I HAD to do. I did all this on Wednesday, so anticipation had built up pretty high by the time Sunday rolled around for the fight.

I wandered over to Laura’s room at about 1:03 in the pm for to pick her up and salir. I knocked on her door and was greeted by a person who was decked out in a Minnesota Gophers jersey and ready to friggin’ rock a bullfight. She remarked that she felt like she pretty much had to do up a jersey of some sort for this thing and that it was either the Gophs or a Brazil soccer one. Yeah, that seems like an irrelevant detail to point out, but remember this little tidbit for later. We in the business know this technique as “foreshadowing.” If this were a film, there’d be some sort of music here to get you to notice the importance of the situation, but alas, this is merely a blog… for now. Anyways, Laura and I grabbed our bag lunches we’d requested at the front desk (due to the fact that we were going to miss the meal) and headed out at about 1:10.

Just so you know, I've never actually watched an episode of Star Trek ever...

Shortly thereafter we were on a bus to Madrid and busted out our lunches. One of the sad things about this country is the fact there’s defs a lack of sandwiches. This problem literally kills me inside, so it was with much joy that I opened up the plastic bag containing our sustenance to be greeted by an apple, a bottle of water, and a friggin’ decently sized sandwich! Yay!During consumption of said meal it became extremely apparent to me that there was a very noticeable piece of apple stuck to the end of Laura’s nose. Now this is one of those situations that we’ve all faced before (whether it be a food particle, some sort of residue from inside the nose, or any other thing). It’s just a human trait that can’t be avoided. What does one do when this occurs? Do you say something to the person about it? Ignore it and hope that said persona just dislodges it without noticing? Hope that it falls off of its own accord? I’m not going to lie, I don’t know what the proper protocol here is. However, I can tell you what I did. Nothing.

Apparently Laura was facing the same dilemma as me as I had some apple on my snoz as well. It wasn’t until she wiped her face with her napkin and took a gander at it that she realized that we were both complete tools for staring at each other and not saying anything. Thus, we both came to the conclusion that we’re good enough friends to point such things out to each other in the future. Comedy at its best. Now obviously this wasn’t a very good story. And for that I apologize because it was a hilarious situation. But you know, you kind of had to be there. Nonetheless, while this blog is for the fans, some of the memories are just for me too :-)
So we got to Madrid without any issues at about 2:20 or so in the tarde. Not a problem at all. We had to pick up the tickets between 1:00 and 4:00, so there was plenty of time to say the least. I’d studied the frigg out of the Madrid metro station map the day before and gotten some good advice from the ever-so-cool Jennifer (who’d gone to a bullfight the previous week), so I was feeling pretty solid about the whole traveling thing. So we hopped on said metro and rode it as close as we could get to the Plaza de Colón (the place where the tickets were to be acquired).
Turns out it was only somewhat close. It took us about 20 or so minutes of walking to get to our destination, but that gave us plenty of time to just walk about, dominate the city, and just have a good time. And take a look at the following picture taken during this time and tell me that this isn’t another tight example of foreshadowing. Lucky, indeed.
Upon our arrival to the Plaza de Colón, the search for the ticket store place dealy (AKA Teyci's Office) commenced. The address for the place was Goya 5, Pasaje Comercial Carlos III. Shouldn’t be too hard to find. I mean, the website from where I ordered the tickets said that it was right across from the Plaza and they even provided us with a direct address. AND my dad’s a mailman (and the best friggin’ one ever, mind you), so I feel like I have an advanced knowledge of addresses and other such things due to this. Thus, how friggin’ hard could it be to find this place?

Turns out if you’re me, the answer is somewhat. And if you’re Laura, the answer is none. Thankfully. We stood in the Plaza looking across the street for signs of this place when she noticed a “7” on one of the buildings. I figured this was a marking for the blocks and stated that we probably only had two more to walk. Laura’s apparently smarter than me and came to the conclusion that the number was an address. Good call on her part as the office was two doors down from that one. I guess it wasn’t our time to walk any farther (HA! Do you see what I did there?! See, because “It’s Not My Time” is a song by Three Doors Down, and the building was only two doors down. Holy crap, that’s an incredible play on words! Props to this guy! :-)).
So we walked to the other side of the calle and went up to the door that had the sign for the office right friggin’ above it. It was locked. Raspberries. But there was some sort of buzzing/call system that one would typically see outside of an apartment complex there. Thus, we pushed each of the like ten buttons several times in the hopes that someone would let us in. Each time one was pressed a little mini camera could be heard scanning us from inside this little apparatus. Creepy. The whole thing was to no avail, though. Laura looked at me and asked me what time it was. I peeked at my reloj and retorted by telling her that it was 3:35. Hm… people in Spain have a tendency to close stuff down early, she said. Oh, schnikes.
We backed away from this building and walked to the next one over to see if there was a way in from there. Upon entrance, we were instantly greeted by a friggin’ FLASHING, RED-NEON SIGN for the Teyci’s Office. Ok… so this was the correct building, I gathered. Nice. Probably just disgruntled (yeah, I'm using that as a verb) a lot of people living in that apartment complex, but meh, whatevs. We walked up to the two tellers, and I exchanged information with the people in my broken Spanish. One of them gave me our tickets and turned away abruptly. Transaction complete, I guess… He looked back and bid us a jovial farewell. Ah, old Spaniards and their social skills, how I love them… or something to that effect.

The tickets stated that the bullfight was to start at 5:00. Thus, we had about an hour and eighteen minutes to grab some more food-age before the whole thing. We wandered off back in the direction of a metro station with the hopes of stumbling upon something solid. And something solid we found. Take a look.
Moving on, apparently there’s a food chain in Spain that may or may not exist anywhere else in the world that’s simply titled “Nebraska.” Moderately baffled by this information upon the finding of this place, we decided to eat there. A quick look at the menu revealed that they had hotdogs. For pretty friggin’ cheap. Both of us decided to order such things. I mean, there was no way that I could turn that down. PLUS there was bacon on it. Yeah. Frigg yeah, even.
As we waited for our food, our gaze turned up to the TV the establishment had playing at the time. Huh, a soccer game. Not too surprising. Wait… Spain vs… Brazil!? I later found out this was like the championship game of some sort of HUGE indoor tournament. Darn fine decision on Laura’s part to go with the Minnesota jersey, I’d say. Definitely not the day to roll with the yellow of Brazil, could’ve been interesting. While we pondered over this happening, our food arrived. And I must say that it was nothing short of exquisite. Hotdog, bun, two types of condiments of some sort slathered all over the place, bacon, and fries. Money.
We rolled out of Nebraska and back into Spain at about 4:25. Plenty of time to catch the metro, transfer, and then arrive at the Plaza de las Ventas de Toros for the fight at 5:00. Cake. After repping this whole thing, we followed a ton of people off the subway, up a like a flight or so of stairs, and into like 1929. The massive arena was instantly noticeable as it dwarfed everything around it. I knew that it sat 25,000 people, but dang, I was still taken aback by how gihugeant it was.
Present in the area was a tight statue that we totally had to get a picture of. Now one of the first rules of Spain (and tourism in general) is to hold on to your camera (and err’thing else) at all times, but there were tons of people here and everybody seemed like a tourist (yeah, like no Spaniards here at all), so we found a nice middle-aged fella who seemed to be overjoyed to take our pic. Little did we know that this cat was a professional photographer as he took a couple of shots trying to properly position himself to nullify the sun’s glare. He walked up to us after the snapping of the pics and pointed to the sky muttering “Sun… sun,” in broken English. Good thing he did that, because neither of us have any skills at all in the Spanish department. He probably could’ve pointed and said “Sol… sol,” and anyone would’ve figured it out. But yeah, we’re totally two blonde Americans at a bullfight, so I guess it stands to reason that we probably wouldn’t speak Spanish. Nonetheless, he was a very kind man who took our picture and didn’t steal Laura’s camera. So yay for that!
Of course after this picture festivity, we had to go pick up a couple of t-shirts for ourselves at the little dealy outside the arena. Tourists, indeed. We pondered buying some candy as well for the whole thing, but decided against it. The woman rocking the dulce place had no idea how to answer Laura’s question of what her favorite one was, so thus, we decided to roll sans candy. But I'm not going to lie, the idea of consuming popcorn at a bullfight is an incredibly awesome one... next time...

We walked into the place up to the dude checking the tickets over. As is customary in Spain, he ripped them at the top, and we were allowed access to the impending massacre. Now doesn’t that process of ticket checking seem a bit sketchy to you? Like he just rips it. Imagine that if you accidentally ripped the ticket yourself somehow. You probably wouldn’t be allowed in. Maybe this wouldn’t be the biggest deal at a bullfight, but they rip tickets for EVERYTHING. Including plane and bus. I guess you just gots to be careful with ye stuff.

The man pointed out the direction for us to go, and we wandered farther into the massive edifice. We followed the signs and started walking up the stairs to the tenido alto when I took a look at the tickets. Hm… they said “tenido bajo” on them. Interesting. So we walked back to the steps and asked someone where we should go specifically. He pointed us to an area on this, the lower, level. Tight. We weren’t complaining. We kept moving until we got into our designated section. We looked around briefly and found it to be packed. Except for two spots right in front of us. Holy friggin’ crap! We instantly grabbed ourselves some stone seating IN THE SECOND ROW before anyone could snatch them up. Awesomeness that in no way can be contained in a can!
We looked at each other with chagrin at our good fortune. Epic seats. We turned back to the ring and just waited for the festivities begin. I couldn’t hold back the smile on my face at this whole thing. I was in Spain. With a great friend. At a friggin’ bullfight. With primo seats. After a brief little parade of all the matadors and other people involved in the thing, it got under way.
Now I don’t normally feel like I’m in Spain when I’m here. Like, chilling in Toledo and such isn’t a big deal to me anymore. It’s home. But when that first bull came barreling out into the ring, I felt like I was in friggin’ Spain. Like I actually had a sense of nationalism about the whole country. It was absurd and something that I probably won’t experience again while here. That’s how awesome it was. Laura and I certainly made the people around us aware of our thoughts as well in terms of this. Now I’d be surprised if the old Asians in front of us, or in fact if anyone around us, spoke English, but we (and especially her) got some interesting looks from the fellow watchers of this awesome affair. Crazy Americans.
A’ight, so at this point you’re probably wondering how a bullfight actually goes. Well, dear friend, let me tell you. Said activity consists of three stages, or “tercios” if you will (which translates to like “thirds,” I believe). In the first, the tercio de varas, the matador (or in Spain, the “torero”) comes out and watches the bull to kind of get a feel for what the animal likes to do in terms of charging and attempting to gore the frigg out of the man. As said crazy man watches on, two people come out riding horses to join in the festivities. These peeps are known as “picadores,” or “lancers” if you prefer. The name comes from the fact that these cats each have a GIANT friggin’ lance that they use basically use to wreck the bull’s dreams. Wisely during all this, the horses are wearing some sort of armor, because if they weren’t… well, there’d be a lot of dead caballos on our hands.
The tercio de banderillas comes next. In this stage three more crazy people (the banderilleros) come out rocking what we in the bullfighting world know as the aforementioned “banderillas.” These are basically colorful, absurdly sharp, barbed sticks-o-death. These dudes goad the bull into running at them, and then brilliantly sidestep the charging the beast, jump into the air, and drop the proverbial stick hammer into the bull’s back. Friggin’ nuts.
The third and final stage is called the tercio de muerte. Now” muerte” significa “death” in Spanish, so you can probably surmise where this is going. At this point the torero comes back into action and basically (in theory) owns the bull something fierce. He busts out his cape (muleta) and toys with the animal for a fair amount of time in an effort to sufficiently tire the poor creature out even more so. When he’s decided that it’s exhausted enough, he reveals his sword, does an absurdly gangsta pose with it by pointing said sword directly at the toro, runs straight at him, and plunges the weapon into the beast’s back – preferably between the shoulder blades going down into the heart area.
If all has gone well, the bull collapses briefly after this takes place. Then one of the cronies comes back out with what’s pretty much a knife and stabs the bull in the brain to kill it. And then just to “pay the insurance,” he severs the cervical vertebrae of the animal to ensure death.

At this point, three horses come out flanked by a couple of dudes to drag the bull out of the arena. I swear it looks exactly like the end of The Mummy Returns *spoiler alert* where Imhotep becomes mortal again and the carriage drags away his invincibility-ness. *end spoiler* And as the horses run out of the place, for some weird reason one of the guys cracks a bullwhip to just to top the whole thing off. The whole thing is completely surreal. And we got to see six of these friggin’ fights (each torero gets two bulls)!
I should point out that yeah… like only one or two of the fights ended cleanly. There was definitely some difficulty for the toreros with their finish with the sword, and some problems with the dudes stabbing the creature at the end of it all. It seemed like at times the B-squad was out there, but that definitely wasn’t the case as one of the fighters was absolutely money out there in terms of dominating the bull. I can’t even describe how sick he was in terms of the pwnage.
What I can describe, though, is the fact that we watched the last couple fights from the FIRST FRIGGIN’ ROW, SON! Yeah, a couple of the old Asian people in front of us just got up and left. Holy schnikes, Batman! We sat in the first row of the most famous and important bullfighting ring in the world to see the last fights of the season! How epic is that!?!? Answer: Very. Very epic, indeed.
Yeah, I workout a bit. What can I say? :P

But that wasn’t the end of the whole thing. After hanging around the stands for a bit to take some pics, we noticed that some people were actually inside the bullring. Yeah, we had to get in there. So we wandered around briefly before finding access to this thing. Now there’s no way that any picture can do justice to what it was like to stand in the middle of a bullfighting ring. It’s nothing short of amazing. It’s basically a straight-up coliseum-like apparatus. When you’re inside it, you really feel like you should be either (A) fighting bulls or (B) fighting humans/other animals in ancient Rome. It’s breathtaking to find yourself in the center of it. So after rocking all this, our day in Madrid had come to an end. So we hopped on the metro to get back to the bus station for to head back to Toledo. We found ourselves in the city at about 9:30, which was just a bit too late to catch dinner. So there was really only one way we could end this already perfect day. With McDonald’s. Frigg yeah. Best. Day. EVER!Yeah, this is the VERY McDonald's in Toledo that we ate at. Thanks, Google images! And on a related note, all of the pics from the bullfight that we went to are Laura's. So yeah, I totz just straight jacked them from her. With that being said, gracias TONS, Laura! :-)

Like I said, gangsta!