New Year Celebration in Pamplona, Spain

New Year Celebration in Pamplona, Spain

 This is how people roll in Spain: all night and until the sun comes out.

I can attribute the word "intense" to almost every part of the New Year Celebration; intense, starting from dinner and all the way until I crawled into bed at 8:30am.

Dinner table was filled with food. Too much food for two people, I'd say.
"Eating" took more than 2 hours, because we also watched TV in the process and talked about everything possible.

Fun tradition: In Spain, when the clock beats the last 12 seconds of the year, people eat one grape every second. Susana cheated, buying the small type of grapes, which made it easy. I heard that people could even choke on the grapes sometimes!

At around 1:00am, we headed out into a bar nearby. It is one of Susana's friend's bar, where older (and according to mom, "Not that old") and more sophisticated (less sophisticated when drunk, though) people hand out. The friend is a Russian lady with a rough and crude outer shell, with a lovely person inside... Shame I didn't get to see that lovely side of her though.

I didn't know ANY of the songs, because they were from some prehistoric age... although everyone in the bar would sing along to each and every song! I had fun watching people, trying to understand, pretending to understand, and dancing away.

I also got a phone number. SCORE! And no, it wasn't one of the old men! XP
It was a guy that the bar-lady introduced me to, and he was the youngest I met there... which was still old-ish: 32.

In any case, at around 8am, and after several failed attempts at persuading Susana to go home, I told her I couldn't stay awake any longer. She wanted to stay until breakfast, and then head home at 10am...
...Breakfast... The thought alone of food after a sleepless night made me sick. I guess I'm so boring when compared to Spaniards... even the older ones.

I was in bed at 8:30am... Tired, full of orange juice, and very very happy.

How did you guys celebrate New Year's? Did you eat with family and then go crazy at countdown? Did you go out, or stayed up late with family or friends?

Post photos up! :D



Fun Fact: People in Pamplona dress-up for New Year's, just like they would for Halloween. Pamplona is the only city it is really practiced in, although it's slowly spreading into other cities and towns as well.

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