The city of Siena had been slowly transforming as contrade put up decorations around their territories (seen mostly with colorful lamps and flags) and the Sienese (as well as some tourists who probably didn’t understand their significance) would show support by wearing colorful contrada scarves.
(they barreled in mounds of dirt to cover the stones. And the imprints of the horse hooves are just an inkling of how fast they were going)
The week of the 26-2 we lived and breathe PALIO (wiki it).
It was pretty much impossible to go anywhere without hearing songs and chants, or running into traffic of a contrada traveling together.
On Wednesday afternoon, Michelle and I were lucky to catch a drum procession from one of the contradas before going into work.
(See all the happy, smiling faces?)A couple of hours later we were back in the Piazzo di Campo to watch the officials draw names of the horses for the specific contrada. We had an extreme taste of the high tension and rivalries when two enemy contradas (Oca and Londa I believe) got into a fist fight. I have never seen anything like it before in my life. About sixety grown men with the hands flying down from above their heads, just pummeling each other. The surrounding crowd was either fleeing from oncoming hands or shouting obscenities, lighting fire further. And it took over ten minutes for the cops to show up as well as break it up.
(I thought about my camera too late, but you can see the white hats of the policemen trying to divide the two groups. And all the people on the ledges and balconies were still yelling at the crowd)Friday morning at work, Debora, our mentor, played us a video of that morning’s prova (practice round). In it we watched one of the horses slam into the corner of the piazza’s make shift rail, and another horse trip badly, knocking his jockey off and trampling over him. One of the horses, belonging to Chiocciola, died later from a heart attack and his jockey had a brain hemorrhage, and the other horse wounded his leg.
A sullen attitude swelled over the people of Siena, made even worse when the sky opened later that afternoon. Michelle and I had just bought more shoes after work (really cute white sandals if you were wondering) and we were slowly meandering to get a panino for lunch. We were distracted by an amazing vintage shop, and had been sifting through the clothes when it started pounding outside. Lots of rain and HUGE pieces of hail. I have never personally seen hail this big. And the first of July mind you. Anyways, we were stuck in this vintage store with lights flickering trying to direct our other roommate Edie to our location. Once the rocks stopped coming from the sky, we decided to go find her instead, and try to make it to the next bus home. The next twenty minutes were spent running/sloshing through the stone streets of Siena, being drenched by the rain, and looking like lunatics to the many onlookers in shops trying to stay dry.
The rain also proved a slight problem for the Palio that was scheduled for the next day. The track for the horses to run is all dirt. Meaning if it rained too much, if at all maybe, on Saturday, it would be postponed because the horses would be injured in mud. We came into town around 2:30 in the afternoon hoping for the best. Even though the sky was gray, there was still plenty of parading and singing to start lifting anxious spirits.
By 4 we moved into the Piazza in order to claim decent viewing spots. At 5, all entrances but one are closed; and even though the center looks full, somehow more people are still filing in. There was a very slow parade of all the contradas in their costumes and complete with flag tossers, which was only entertaining for about the first ten minutes (it went all the way up till after 7:30. Luckily I was standing next to two guys traveling around Europe for the next couple of weeks from Australia. They had chosen to support Oca (the goose) based on that it is some slang term in Australia. And they defined it with another word of slang. So if any of you know what they term is in Australia – let me know. I personally favored Luca (the she-wolf) and Tartuca (the turtle, and UC colors).
(flag tossing!) Finally the traditional procession had ended and they started getting the line-up ready. I have never been with such a large group of people ever and have it be that silent. Gave me chills and sent my heart racing. Although there was still a pang of sadness as only 9 horses were racing instead of the expected 10 because rules do not permit for a new horse.
And then, this happened: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KBRSFulakdE
And I was there.
Basically the Palio is my new favorite sporting event. And in the end I was very thankful for the cooler weather, it would have been much more miserable to wait that long for two minutes in the dire heat.
Note that out of the beginning nine, only five horses returned with riders actually on them. Second place in fact was riderless (in the Palio, it is the horse not the jockey who wins. So if the horse, jockeyless, had crossed first, that contrada would have won).
The Oca Contrada won! Obviously the Australians knew what they were talking about. We followed them in their victory march to their church, where they hung the Palio flag. So much happiness in that little square. Grown men and children alike weeping and kissing and laughing in the victory. The jockey was carried through on the shoulders of the contrada, and true heroes welcome. And the horse was covered with banners and flowers and also showered with kisses.
(the bottom is members of the winning contrada reaching for the tall white victory flag to claim as theirs)It was truly an incredible experience – that was followed with equally incredible pizza and gelato [cannello (cinnamon) and fondente (dark chocolate) yummmmm].
Although it would have been easy to wallow in the celebrations of the night, we had to catch at 7:50 am bus the next morning in order to make it to church on time. The Branch is teeny tiny! 30- 40 people maybe (13, I think, of those all from BYU). The branch president kept calling us “my sheeps” to gather us into the next room. He was nice and funny, until he asked me to speak in church (well with a branch that small all of us were pounced on immediately). Dang it.
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