Yo yo bitches, here is a bit of news from the north of
Watching the soccer – Italian style
I have never watched a soccer game in a plaza packed full of crazy fanatical soccer fans. I don't think most people would find standing for 2 hours in an overcrowded space trying to watch giant screen while the people all around you continually wave flags, swear, jump around, move, push etc a particularly comfortable experience. This however was the very situation I managed to find myself in on the 9 th of July. Aside from lack of comfort these are also not the ideal conditions for a sports fan to view a game, as with all the stuff going on around you the game itself becomes rather difficult to watch. One thing I do know for a fact however is if you were in the situation I was in you will know exactly when your team has scored.... and one sure way of telling is by accessing the amount of beer that has landed on you.
Perhaps I should clarify this point a bit better. Imagine being in an overcrowded space full of people that are nervously holding and drinking beer. Now imagine that at some random unexpected point in time all these people start jumping up and down repeatedly in a crazed frenzy. Now you don't need a degree in physics to picture what all this beer is doing during this period – yes that's right, it goes straight up in the air and lands on absolutely everybody. This usually means that something good has happened in the game, you may not know exactly what has happened, but you WILL know that something happened.
I am convinced that the people furthest away from the screen had no idea whatsoever as to what's going on in the game. I was not so far from the screen and even I had trouble knowing what was going on from time to time. In fact I don't think people towards back of the crowed even watched the game, they just seemed to drink beer and react to whatever went on in front of them. When the French scored that penalty kick everyone in the crowed thought that he had missed the goal and yes... beer started flying everywhere and everyone was celebrating like crazy. The people in the front stopped when they found out that it was actually a goal but at this point I turned and looked behind me and everyone was still going absolutely ballistic, setting off fireworks, lighting flares, waving flags. I kind of felt sorry for them... It took them about a minute or two before they realized that they had nothing to celebrate.
Now if you don't know how to swear in Italian one of the best learning methods I could suggest is to be amongst a large number of Italians while
One big Party - and Everyone's invited
In the chaos that followed the win I had lost the people I was watching the game with so I began wandering around the streets soaking up the atmosphere. I happened to walked pass one Italian supporter who had passed out on a street corner from drinking too much. He would have had to have drunk a lot because I don't think it would be possible to sleep with the amount of noise that was going on all around him. "The poor bastard doesn't even know
Everywhere you went was a party, and a big one. I started moving around the bars I knew to see if I could find someone I knew, it didn't really matter if I did or not because everyone everywhere was in the mood to dance around, sing and basically act like an idiot. While I was in a bar on the outer part of the town someone I know sends me a message saying that I really need to come to a place called Monte Berico because there is a massive party happening there. Just so you know, Monte Berico is a place on top of a mountain nearby town. Anyway, I went. I don't actually know how long it took me to get there, it didn't really matter because there was a party happening the entire way there. People later thought I was crazy going to this mountain party by foot but if you saw the state the roads were in I can assure you that you could almost certainly get to the top of the mountain quicker by walking.
Speaking of roads, the roads could best be described as total chaos. Movement was almost at a complete standstill. Fortunately, no body seemed to care too much. I noticed the road was clogged not only with cars and bikes but also trucks, tractors and also even farming and industrial equipment. It seemed to be a case of "the bigger the better" and it looked as though anything that could move (no matter how slowly) was decorated with Italian flags and driven around in an attempt to create the greatest amount of traffic congestion possible.
The party on the mountain was pretty hectic. But so was the party going on everywhere. When I eventually came down from the mountain I met up with some people I watched the Australia-Italy game with. They were really happy to see "that crazy Australian guy" and they proceeded recite all the English swear words I had previously taught them. The street they were in was one of the main streets whereby cars could exit the city centre. This turned out to be a problem for anyone trying to actually leave the centre of town by car. This is because every car that attempted to leave the city was first road blocked by a mass of drunken Italians, whom then proceeded to cover the car in flags and shake it repeatedly from side to side before letting the car pass through. At one stage a truck passed through and yes, everyone still tried to shake it, unsuccessfully I might add, however it was fun watching drunk people try and shake a truck with their hands. I tried to purchase a beer from the nearby local bar only to find out that they had run out of beer!!! I have never experienced this before in my life. All they had left was cheep shitty stuff that tasted like dirty cask wine. It was good enough for me though. After a while (about 3am) the bars started to close, most likely because they had all run out of alcohol, so I decided to head back into the city centre.
Fuck the police
When I had got to the centre I noticed that riot police began to arrive in the main square. "Wow, cool... riot police" I thought to myself. I started taking photos of them and one of them got the shits with me, grabbed me and started talking to me in some dialect of Italian that I did not understand a word of. In this moment some Huge dude from the crowd steps in between us pushes the police officer away from me and begins arguing with the police dude. What they were talking about I have no idea but whatever the problem the police had with me seemed to have been resolved by that big dude. The dude then started saying something to me in Italian which I did not understand but I thanked him nonetheless for saving me from the police and went about my merry way. Once the police started moving around town people started heading home and the party began to die down. Only the really die hard drunk Italian fans remained in the streets and I'm sure the police were mobilizing to clamp down on them. Not wanting to be involved with the police anymore, it was then that I decided to head home.
An American Tourist
I later met and spoke to an American tourist whom, in typical American fashion, had never heard about the world cup. She told me she was in her hotel room and absolutely frightened when everyone started gathering into the streets late at night with flags, shouting and singing things in Italian. She thought some kind of revolution was going on. I found this completely hilarious.
(Very Brief) Summary
* Team score goal = beer go everywhere (remember this. It could be important one day)
* Don't drive cars around crazy soccer fans in
* Don't take photos of riot police... they don't like it and they have big sticks
* Americans are amusing
