Feeeeeeeeeria in Jaen, Spain!

On Saturday night we went to ‘la feria’ in the capital town of our province, Jaen.  Feria is a week-long celebration filled with parades, mobile tents that turn into bars, restaurants and even night clubs.  There is a part of the city that is sectioned off specifically for this week–long party.  Each town in the Andalucía province has their own feria at some point during the spring or summer.  The Jaen feria is special because each year it’s the very last feria celebrated in all of Andalucía, marking the “official end of summer”. 

Feria = Let’s see, think a fair that never closes, and add to that – loud music, and a lot of dancing and alcohol. 

Think flea market booths, however much larger tents.  At feria, there are rows after rows of booths, restaurants and clubs, each one carefully constructed for that single week of use.  For example, certain booths were entire night clubs, filled with laser shows, cages in the middle for dancing (I am not at liberty to discuss who entered these cages), and others were assembled as full sit-down restaurants.  And the streets are full of people; women to little kids are all wear the traditional, very formal “flamenco” dresses.  Nancy especially enjoyed looking at all of the different styles of flamenco dresses, and thought about purchasing one until she realized the cost was around 150 Euro and she might only be lucky enough to wear it a few times in the spring once feria season starts back up.  The dresses were eye-catching to say the least, usually very bright with multiple colors and polka dots were not uncommon.  Basically, having a feria gives each town an excuse to throw a week long party – as if they needed another excuse…

Yes... those are real ponies.

There was only one way to go to feria and that would be to “do it like the Spanish do”.  What does this mean exactly?  Well, let’s just say we would be arriving by bus at 4:30pm and wouldn’t be leaving (or sleeping) until the first bus back to Linares at 10:30am.  We were going to party the night away using the Spanish mantra “vivimos en la calle” (we live in the street) to encourage our group of 7 brave souls.

Each tent had its own group of people that it attracted, its own themes, and its own personality.   One thing that everyone had in common was the idea to “botellon”, which is the rough Spanish equivalent of “tailgating”.  It seems that very few people actually buy drinks inside the establishments, but rather choose to buy their own bottles of liquor, beer, or wine, and they carry it around all night, mixing their cocktails in between tents.  Obviously, this was a genius idea, so of course we followed the Spanish example.

The purchasing of alcohol deserves a quick mention, as it involved finding a non-descript door in the back of small grocery store where we had to knock and ask the attendant to bring us a bottle of alcohol.  They opened to door only enough to hear you and then again to hand you the bottle, all this occurring under the eyes of a vigilant police officer standing about 2 meters away.  Also, you didn’t really get to pick what you want … there was no menu or list to choose from, so when you said “rum” or “vodka”, etc. they brought you a bottle of whatever they wanted to give you … and you take the bottle and say “gracias”.

Now that we had our supplies, we joined the party.  The real party starts at night … It was complete mayhem; the booths were packed with people and it was amazing to see the different age ranges of people that were out all night.

Nancy made sure we experienced the “fair” part of feria by riding multiple rides – which absolutely added to the fun of the night.  I begrudgingly accepted her invitation to go on the over-priced rides, but am pretty sure I was the one asking her to do it again, once the ride was over.  I can admit it.

Our typical strategy was to roll up into a tent and create a circle, where the group would dump all of our backpacks/jackets/etc. since we were carrying a lot of supplies to get us through the night.  We would drop it like it’s hot for a solid hour, before deciding to leave and check out another tent.

I was mostly in charge of getting the group to try all of the different food options.  I loved the smorgasbord of edible treats that existed.  After getting some food, we would head to yet another tent, it was a beautiful cycle.

I think we all were a little worried when we started to get a little tired around 3:30am.  Admittedly, it was a little worrisome to realize how you were tired, but to also know you weren’t (couldn’t) go home for another 7 hours.  What should we do?

Thank you churros con chocolate!  We found a booth that served coffee and churros (deep friend dough, dipped in chocolate).  It was like a Popeye eating his spinach, we were all revitalized and put our ‘dancin’ shoes’ back on.  Catching our second wind, we were rocking the different booths of the feria, until Nancy decided to lead the group to yet another round of feria rides.

 Yes, Nancy, after drinking multiple cocktails, eating churros y chocolate and a patata asada (baked potatoes with tons of toppings) earlier in the night, thought it would be a wonderful idea to sit on a large circle and spin around very fast for about 5 minutes straight.  Needless to say, I didn’t join Nancy and her entourage that decided to ride these crazy rides, mid-feria, at 5:00am!!  However, the pictures were classic and wish I had joined them for pictures, if nothing else.

5:30am – We were heading down the homestretch of our trip and feeling strong.  We decided to get to the train station right when they opened at 7:00am to make sure we would be able to buy tickets for the first bus back to Linares.  This felt like an incredibly long (uphill) march to the bus station, only to realize that we wouldn’t be able to purchase our tickets until the bus arrives at 10:25am.  At this point, we suddenly lost all motivation ‘to keep the party alive’ and all remaining bodies quickly crumbled on the hard metal beaches – however, after a long night on our feet, they were actually quite comfortable.

7:15am – The night three hours could not get here fast enough, this was probably the least enjoyable part of the trip and we definitely looked like a pathetic crew.  Nevertheless, we managed to make it through these last few hours and somehow were coherent enough to get on our bus, only to pass out again on our 1 hour journey home to Linares.

Walking back to our ‘piso’ in broad daylight, we were exhausted, but felt like we definitely left our mark on the feria in Jaen.  Boom goes the dynamite.