Balloon Thief

I spent about four days in Pamplona during the summer I was in Europe. I traveled with Dwight (one of my best friends) and we arrived at the start of the Festival of San Fermin. Within about 3 minutes of being in Pamplona we had already given in and purchased the standard attire (which we wore for the rest of the week).

Here's Dwight



And me...



Our time there was part fascinating and part miserable since we had nowhere to sleep (for some reason we ended up sleeping on the ground near a river...and also northern Spain is the windiest place I have ever been) and nothing to do from 8:30 in the morning until 8:00 the next morning. So we did what we could to pass the time. This included wandering around town, looking for cheap food, and arguing with the police who had detained me and taken my camera the first day. However, our nights were filled with two joyous events.

The two things we did in the evenings were attend the nightly fireworks jubilee with throngs of white and red clad Spaniards -



and spend hours at the local fair.

One evening while we were at the fair, someone robbed the balloon vendor. Lucky for us, he didn't steal the vendors money, but his balloons. Few things are funnier than a huge crowd of people chasing some crazy bandit through a fair while the bandit has about 80 large balloons in his hands. We just stood about 50 yards away and watched the clouds of balloons race through the paths of the fair while people screamed and tried to run after him. I can't think of a more obvious thing to steal than helium balloons but the fearless attitude seemed to fit the zeitgeist (I learned that word in high school) of the whole place. In the end, he eventually ran out of sight and I'm not sure if he was ever captured, but I remember me and Dwight just looking at each other as if to make sure we had just seen the same thing. Only in Pamplona...

- Jeremiah