Tomato Soup not for the Soul

The great thing about being in Europe over the summer is the abundance of festivals you can enjoy. The next key festival on my agenda was La Tomatina (the tomato festival). It is considered the world’s largest food fight, with truckloads of tomatoes being distributed along a narrow enclosed street in the center Bunol, Spain. It is also along the typical Australia festival circuit, so I ran into a few of my Aussie friends I had met earlier in the trip.
The festival was definitely an experience. It was an early start, to get to a supersaturated street (of mostly young travelers), and then waiting in the scorching heat for the fight to begin. Luckily the other tradition of the festival is the locals standing on their balconies tossing buckets of water or spraying hoses on the sweaty, awaiting patrons below. Once the tomatoes arrived, I found that location was the key, and mine was not great. We were not close enough to the truck route to get the surplus of tomatoes. Our little square did mostly watching and threw around the straw mushy remains that made it out of the main battle zone. Trying to move closer to the action was nearly impossible as you were shoulder-to-shoulder in this sardine can town center. But when it was over I was rather glad I was not covered in the tomato soup for the trip back to Valencia. I am sure there were people that could not get the smell off for days. But at least their hair was strong and clean.