16

Yesterday was La Festa di San Giovanni (The Festival of Saint John). He's the patron Saint of the city so the whole day was a party. There was a parade in the morning that my lazy sleepy self missed. There was one in the afternoon that was apparently better though and we went to that. It was the parade leading up to the Calcio Storico (which literally translates into historical soccer, but that's not a good way to describe it). Basically teams from the neighborhoods of the city (Santa Maria Novella, Santa Croce, etc) play "soccer" against each other. This year the two teams that made it to the final were the Rosso (red) and Azzurro (blue), which is why the guy above is holding a blue soccer ball and a red soccer ball. The costumes are the "storico" part.

Full armor, drums, trumpets, flutes, cannons, crossbows, flag twirling people. Basically one of the coolest parades I've seen in a long time. Especially because everyone follows after it, going to the Calcio Storico, which is the actually match.

This is the red team. I do not support the red team because they blue team was much more attractive. They were the Italian boys I had been looking for. The question now is where I can find them from here. The red team was more on the scary side. As in beat you into the ground-scruffy-tattooed scary. Boo red team. Fanatic fans though, since the team is neighborhood. The guy's arm in the photo of the red team is actually with tattoos for the neighborhood and the entire Calcio Storico event. That's devotion.

The red team absolutely slaughtered the blue team though. 14.5 to 3.5. Booooo. They probably won because of the scary thing though. "Soccer" is not soccer as we know it. I'd actually say it's a lot closer to rugby. There were about fifty guys on the field, along with a few referees and about eight EMTs (the Italian equivalent anyway). All wearing the strange historical pants. The beautiful players all shirtless. The guys are allowed to do basically anything it takes to get the ball to the end of the field and put the ball over the wall. And the other team being allowed to do anything to stop them.

We have to do interviews each week for my Italian class and yesterday we had to ask about the festival. I talked with two police officers with two friends. In the words of the policeman (loosely translated): the soccer game is just a cover for the young guys from rival neighborhoods to beat each other up. Seriously. Guys just run at each other. They ignore the ball at somepoints and just beat on someone. Guys are in rather compromising positions all over the field, holding each other down so they don't jump on the person with the ball. Two guys were carried off the field on stretchers. Some other people from our group watched a guys hand get bent backwards and cut spurt everywhere.

Basically it was the most amazing yet bizarre sport I've ever seen. I'll have to steal a video a friend took to show the real way the game works. Not that we ever figured out what the half points were.

There were fireworks later in the evening, but of course we missed them because we were at dinner. Technically I was waiting for other people to get their second courses. I'm actually really disappointed about missing them because I love fireworks. Seeing them over the Arno would have been amazing, but it would have been ruder for me to tell everyone to finish their dinners or eat only one course or something else presumptious like that. Shame really.