The night of being bumped on… by fruit

This is the night of seeing shoulders and of being bumped on by fruit bags… and everybody loves it.

There are thousands of people that count the days to this day. Not because they’ll be opening presents, but because they plan on tasting all the ponchas, sandwiches and cherry brandy they find underway… and the way is getting increasingly longer.

This is the day in which the market starts in the Old Town and finishes in the Infante roundabout, the day in which everybody sees shoulders and become heroes, because crossing the city, especially as one approaches the city market, is not for everyone. Well, sorry. It is for everybody. For the youngest who, perched on their fathers’ shoulders, are the ones who most enjoy the feast as they are the only ones who manage to see it, for the biggest because they may be able to recognize a person five metres away and take ten minutes to reach her, for the women who insist on holding on to their husbands, not so much not to get lost as not to lose them, for the grannies who insist on dragging themselves over the city because they have been doing it for over fifty years, and for the tourists who, enchanted by the novelty, feel as if they are in Hyde Park on December 31^st.

Funchal starts changing in mid afternoon. The streets start to close, the stalls are set up, the hundreds of kilos of bread and marinated pork are unloaded, and the city starts to smell to food. Just as if it had become a huge marinated pork sandwich.

And is there anything better than to go out into the street and see all our acquaintances in a row to meet us? Ah, it is not to meet us. It is because no one can move an inch, which means that the half of the street who wants to go east can’t move because the half coming west is stuck. Is there anything better than being bumped on by bags of custard apples or pineapples, and smile to the apology of the poor fellow who, just like us is literally, sandwiched?

There isn’t, I assure you. Even because we have the opportunity to get current on the people we cross with and, in the circumstances in which things are really stuck there’s time to meet someone and perhaps even to get married. Well, I guess not, because that would imply a procession, and this would be impractical. But you get my drift…

And is there anything better than to wait for two hours to be served a simple poncho or a sandwich with four bits of meat in it? Of course not!

It’s the spirit that does it. The Christmas one, and the one that allows you to survive the night. Because only the one who enjoy it endure it. If you want to see the last novelties in terms of Christmas accessories, with lots of reindeer, Noddy GUIZOS, and lights, many lights, to light up users’ intelligence.

It’s nice to see this, and it was now extended to the main boulevard of the city. And if the option is to stay there, you can always claim to have been to the market, because the whole city was taken over by the event. It is only over on the 1^st, so enjoy it, because the evening market will only return next year.

Is the problem the fact that live out of town, or just that you are around and can’t manage to get downtown on this night?

Then it is no longer a problem. If you have internet access, this is all you need to follow the events of the evening.

“Na Minha Terra TV” has a special emission to cover the whole event planned to start at 20h30.