On the celebration of music

It was a tiring but unforgettable day. The celebration of music always creates a magical atmosphere in Sminden. Hopefully, we will see you again soon!

Saintes Maries de la Mer, 2024. 21 June.
After I wrote the diary last night, I found a delicious ice cream parlour, where I will go back again because of the nice smile of the girl at the counter, but that’s all! I came across a Spanish flamenco concert and dance in the church square. It was only ten o’clock at night when it began to get dark on the shortest night of the year. In the night’s amusement park bustle, a churros dessert was still to be had, and to finish, I listened to the party bar’s concert until 12:30. Then I walked out to the eastern end of beaches, spread out my sleeping bag in the soft sand under a terrace sheltered from wind and rain.
At five in the morning I woke up to the dawn. However, it looks like the expected sunrise will not happen today. Although the skies have calmed down – yesterday’s wind and light drizzle have disappeared – the thick cloud cover continues to shield us from the orangey colours of the morning. I move my sleeping bag further out to a beach where people are unlikely to be around in the morning.
When I wake up at 9:30, the sun is already shining. Morning ablutions and tooth brushing are done sitting in the seawater. Still, it’s a good life!
I stay for another hour and a half, eating the rest of my salami-baget loot. If someone blessed me with a coffee, my life would be complete.
While I’m baking, I’ll sew my outdated backpack, and hopefully my new bag will arrive this month. Then I thought I’d clean the sand out of my belongings, but I realized it’s not a windmill fight, it’s a wind-sand fight. I think it’s at times like this that they say there are some things we can’t change, it’s just easier to learn to live with them. By the way, my shoes with the flimsy soles are starting to go bad again: they were five euros, the soles were reinforced with a rubber sole instead of a permanent stitching, which gave way again; I’m going to make them authentic by putting a rubber sole on them and letting them fill up with sand – like the outside pockets of my bag.
They hit the del as I walk back to the village. What in God’s name, I’m running into another bull run. The main street is already closed, the herding of young bulls is nowhere to be seen. I sit down on a terrace. Ice cream sundae for breakfast? Why not! Let’s enjoy life: dessert with gooseberries! Mango and some strawberries with lots of whipped cream. It is only after the ice cream that the first spectacle arrives: the young bulls are herded tightly between the horses. It just seems to be a kind of show where farms in the area show off their specimens; followed by folk costumes and a brass band.
In the meantime, I get some water and head for a beach in the direction of the music; I lie down in the sand, reading a book in print for a change. (For a hiker, every weight counts, so I had to get used to the e-book reader.) A Chinese erotic novel written five hundred years ago: little fantasy, but the authors seem unable to sleep on their stomachs, and the summary says that the book only then became pornographic. In the village, I get a sandwich for a snack.
While I’m having a bite to eat, I’m giving directions to a lost Hungarian team. I had to think about the Hungarian words and phrases! The rough thing is that I have to think about the French words! So who am I now?! Where do I belong? Do I belong somewhere?
The good thing about the central beaches of Saint-Maries is that you can walk quite a long way in knee-deep water. In shallow water, the choppy waves are not dangerous, in fact, they are enjoyable. Sometimes I swim lying on the reeds, sometimes I just jump around like a child. I enjoy it. I fall asleep on the afternoon bus. We need to relax, today is a celebration of music, there is no day that someone is not dancing somewhere.
Arriving in Arles, I count eleven stages; it’s a town of just under fifty thousand people. No festive parade, no fancy words, just a festival atmosphere. In Voltaire Square, students from the music school perform; in the Irish pub, the rock concert is on the terrace this time; in de Gaulle Square, the audience is as loud as if it were on the moon; in Place de la Republique, the huge stage is quiet for a while, but in the town hall, a choir sings.
Today I vote for a kebab dinner. At least this kebab was not bad. The best kebabs are made by Turks and Greeks; given the relevant immigration statistics, it’s no wonder I had the best gyros in Berlin and the second best in Budapest.
I really like the music of the two guitarists in the forum space. Walking back to the big stage at midnight, the music is like listening to the soundtrack to the Matrix movie. There’s no trace of the rap music that used to be fashionable – which I don’t mind; when I hear French rap music, I know immediately that I’m in the wrong place in the world at that moment.
But it says a lot about the city’s population when they switch to Arabic disco music at around 12:30 in the morning.
In hindsight, I realise that I wouldn’t have danced any less without alcohol; I wouldn’t have danced any more.
It was a meaningful day, it was a good evening. I spent almost all of my one hundred euro allowance on drinks…