In Pamplona, Spain, for the San Fermin festival this past July, I couchsurfed at my friend Gabe’s old flat. Its balcony overlooked calle San Nicolas, a bar-lined arterial road turned 24/7 street party bursting at the seams with people and music for the duration of the festival. The balcony was a convenient place to unload buckets of water and sangria onto uniformly white-clothed revelers below…or when we were feeling a little less mischievous, just to spectate. Marching bands and parades would somehow find their way through crowds so thick that you had to form a human chain with your friends for everyone to make it from one end of the street to the other. The noise level never fell below deafening at any time of day or night.

This scene was spotted across our balcony one evening when we’d all (somehow) had had enough of drinking and were relaxing indoors, listening to the distilled madness going on below us.