December 31, 1997

Today is the lucky number 13th night in row that we’ve partied hard, and I can’t stop because it’s New Year’s Eve.

I’ve had way too much of the lifestyle that my body hates. Too much caffeine, too much chocolate, too much alcohol, too many late nights, too little sleep. This is vacation, and yet I can’t help think this isn’t terribly good for me. I’m exhausted.

We’ve bought our “uvas de la suerte” (grapes of luck) to partake in a tradition that entails 12 grapes being consumed at the start of the 12 bongs — one for each — and finished by the last, or luck for the year isn’t good. Since we couldn’t find seedless uvas, I suppose we’ll be swallowing seeds in the name of good fortune.

I met B earlier, and he’s supposed to see us later. Puerta del Sol is our destination.

January 1, 1998 – Aftermath

We went to Puerta del Sol last night with our champagne, wine and uvas to welcome the New Year and try our luck with tradition. Another informal tradition is to throw your champagne bottle in the square to break it. Various idiots were trying to cross, stand or dance in the square, and three people went to the hospital bleeding.

Some men were only there to get drunk and collect phone numbers. One of them was slobbering on me until a friend of his introduced him to two scantily clad women in Santa hats. Can’t compete with that I suppose, especially since it’s 7°C and I’m against frostbite.

I was friggin’ tired by 1:30 a.m. since I didn’t have a nap like the rest of the group, so everyone was raring to go and I became starkly aware that I was young, but not THAT young.

The club called “Katmandhu” wasn’t opening until 2 a.m., so it felt like a long night made longer by the fact it started to rain. I met T and T from Stockholm, who had clearly been drinking most of the night with T holding T up or the other way around — very fun couple here on vacation. Everyone else was either obnoxious or only interested in learning curse words in different languages. A real meeting of the minds.

It started slow — cramped tables in a dingy club, crappy service and no dance floor — but after drinking a bunch of Bailey’s and Coco liqueur combos, I didn’t give a rat’s ass. Music was great, we stacked the tables and chairs against the wall and took with reckless abandon to the newly created dance floor. I can’t remember the rest of the night! All I have is a paper napkin with the words, “T and T in Stockholm. Please visit” and their phone numbers written in my lipstick because we couldn’t find a pen to save our lives.

We miraculously made it home around 5:30 a.m. as some people were heading to work. I say miraculous because we could barely walk or see straight, it was a mile and there was no elevator in the pensione to our room on the 4th floor. J leaned on the bannister and shimmied herself up, while M and I crawled. Crawling is a new thing in my life since that night playing ‘Cheat’ on rue Mouffetard in Paris after a dozen duty free vodka shots.

But much like Paris, I had no hangover and was ready for sightseeing promptly at 9:00 a.m., had some churros and chocolate, then came dinner, a movie and walking in the moonlight with Gideon from South Africa until well after midnight. J and M, the youngsters of the group, had hangovers and collapsed by sundown.

Maybe I’m not as old as I thought.

January 1, 2008 – Reflection

My train from Paris to Barcelona had been bombed only a week before, leaving my carriage a burned-out mass with shards of glass on every surface. To add insult to injury, train robbers jumped on during a short stop in Perpignan around 4 a.m. when everyone was sleeping, pried open the locked carriage and stole our luggage. After the initial panic of waking up with nothing had passed — and finding I had passport and money to continue my four-month journey, albeit with complications and altered finances — I realized that I couldn’t be more free at that moment. No possessions, nothing to carry, nothing to declare, no worries! Survival of this journal and the memories it documents is a gift.

If I’d chosen to go home after the bombing instead of keeping it a secret and soldiering on, I would have never met these beautiful people I am fortunate to call my friends.

This is the 10th anniversary of friendships I made New Year’s night, which not only survive, but are stronger today.
• B is a well-traveled multilingual lawyer in Washington DC, who spent years in Brazil and remains one of my most treasured and supportive friends. He flaked that night in Madrid, but I recognized the back of his head when he snuck into the first class train carriage to use the bathroom, and he was “stoked” that we rediscovered each other randomly. We traveled to Venice together for Carnaval and have been there for each other with the right words or a good joke at the right time.
•

T and T — after living/working in different countries apart/together for years and meeting me in some of them — are now married with a daughter, who at 18 months old is already multilingual and social like her parents. Time together is always too short, but moving around has not hurt our friendship; I last saw them on Zante in June. Still fun, still smiling, still amazing, still two of the best cooks and best people I’ve ever known.

I seldom see my friends because the very nature of who we are and how we choose to live life, while binding us as kindred spirits, takes us in different directions in pursuit of dreams come true. And yet, I’ve never felt that the physical distance diminishes our friendship; in-person visits merely enhance what already exists and cannot be broken.

New Year’s 2008 is not a day of new beginnings since new beginnings could happen at any minute of every day. It is also not a day to reflect on 2007. For me, it is a day to remember friends that fill my life with love, laughter and color in the here and now.

Related posts

“New Year’s in Greece”

–
Photos from guiadeviaje.net and valorialabuena.com