FERIA

1 Mayo 2009

This week is La Feria de Abril (The April Fair) here in Sevilla. It is always 3 weeks after Easter, unless Easter falls really late, in which case it’s only two weeks after (the April fair has to be at least partly in the right month!) Sevilla is very famous for this fair, and for most people, it is probably the image they have of Southern Spain. For an entire week, people drink and dance all day and all night. The fairgrounds are in Triana, unfortunately very far from my house. One half of the fair is a collection of private tents called casetas. They are these big tent things, with real walls and decorations and everything. They all have a dining room area, a full bar and kitchen, bathrooms, and a dance floor. Most organizations have them, along with a lot of companies and families. In these casetas, people socialize with their family and friends while eating tapas, drinking rebujitos (a mix of sprite or 7-up with this type of white wine called Manzanilla), and dancing the sevillana. The partying literally doesn’t stop for 7 days, from the lighting ceremony Monday night to the closing fireworks on Sunday night. There is also another part of the fair that is like a carnival – tons of intense amusement park rides, games, and food booths, along with a circus.

My favorite part of feria is that everyone wears flamenco dresses! They are gorgeous and because they are all handmade, every single one is different (unless they’re matching on purpose, like sisters or mother and daughter). Along with the dresses, the women wear matching shawls and jewelry, with flowers and combs in their hair. They all look beautiful; I wish I could afford one of the dresses because I would have LOVED to wear one. Everyone from babies in diapers to old women wore the dresses – the little kids were absolutely adorable all dolled up! And the men all wear suits, some of them the traditional style – especially little boys! During the day, men and women ride around on horses dressed in the typical horsemen outfit, and other men ride on horses with a girl in a flamenco dress riding side-saddle behind him. It is SO cool to look at; I took so many pictures of the couples on horseback, as well as of random dresses, and lots of cute little kids! Other people, mostly families or groups of friends, ride around in decorated horse and carriages. It is a beautiful site to see, the first day I went it was so overwhelming, I didn’t know where to look! Between all of the gorgeous dresses, the carriages, the casetas filled with people dancing, the carnival rides…wow!

I’ve gone a few times this week since I got back from Greece (no flamenco dress, but regular dresses paired with a mtaching flowers in my hair) but my favorite was definitely Thursday. I called SJ’s friend José who I met during Semana Santa. He lives here in Sevilla so he was with a lot of his friends and it was very fun and very authentic. I had a little trouble finding him at first because there are so many people, I didn’t know my way around feria at all, and I couldn’t hear anything on the phone because of all the horses riding around! But eventually I found him and met some of his friends – they were all very nice and didn’t seem to mind my imperfect Spanish. First we went to José’s caseta for some tapas and rebujitos. The rebujitos are very strong so you only drink a small cup full at a time, but you definitely drink more than you realize because the cup is so little and it’s very sweet tasty because of the soda. We hung out there for awhile, and then José left to go home so I went with some of his friends to one of their casetas. We ate and drank some more, listened to some live music (his caseta had a full stage and sound system!) and I talked to a few of the Spaniards. It was definitely good practice for my Spanish, and one of them even wanted to practice his English so we talked for awhile. Two of the girls were dressed up in gorgeous flamenco dresses, I was so jealous! They were both very nice though and went out of their way to talk to me and make sure I was part of the conversation. Later we headed back to José’s caseta to dance some sevillana! I had learned it in my class, and one other night out earlier in the semester, but I’m still pretty awful at it – I can do the feet movements and the hand movements separately, but putting them together is impossible! I was able to keep up with one of the girls for a little while but it was hard! It was very fun though, the music is so catchy and everyone looks beautiful dancing – most of the little girls are much better at it than I am! I left not too late because I am still pretty tired from all of the traveling last weekend but I had a very fun night – I was nervous to call José because I don’t know him that well but I’m so glad I did, it definitely made Feria very real, just like I had imagined it to be! It’s so strange that I learned about Feria like 3 years ago in Spanish class and was like wow that looks amazing, I’m going there – and I did! I went and enjoyed myself – and I still can’t get over how amazing everyone looks in the flamenco dresses! Me encanta la Feria <3

Feria pictures

very shaky video of me walking around Feria