An Update from Siena

Almost a week has passed since the Palio with no blog update from me! Mi dispiace! I guess its just a testament to how extremely busy I have been here in Siena.

Let me begin with the Palio- WOW! An absolutely amazing experience! Thousands of people of all nationalities, speaking all kinds of languages arrived all kinds of early on a scorching Friday to reserve their spot in the campo to watch the event. Our group took a more humane route and only arrived 4 hours early for the supposedly 7pm event – (the race began around 7:45ish, typical Italian time!) We stood in the Piazza del Campo, watching as people poured in, crowding closer and closer as the time for the event neared. A parade began where each Contrada strutted their stuff all the way around the campo with drumming, flag throwing, soldiers marching and the works. Finally, it seemed like the never ending parade (featuring all 17 Contradas) was coming to a close and the horses were brought out. (I was busy scoping out the people sitting in the expensive balconies above the Piazza- I had heard Tom Hanks and President Sarkozy were in attendance last year, and I was hoping to glimpse a celebrity in the stands J) While I saw no celebrities at the Palio itself – I did see Stanley Tucci in the Museo dell’ Opera- Awesome!!)

ANYWAY- The Palio! The horses were all lined up and the names were read out over a loudspeaker (the incredible silence described before in the blog about La Tratta (the horse lottery) occurred once again here. It was as close to absolutely, pin drop silent as one can get outside in a piazza with thousands of people standing in the sun waiting for a horse race to begin. Such an amazing experience to hear such silence in a huge crowd of people- even adults around me were being “shhhed”!)

Before actually beginning the race, the horses made a bunch of false starts. (I was told that last year it was almost dark outside before the horses finally stopped false starting and ran the dang race!) Finally- this I could not see due to heads much higher than mine blocking the way, but the race began! It caught me, and everyone around me by surprise, but they were off! Enormous cheering began when certain horses took the lead and each Palio watcher essentially twirled slowly around to keep their eyes on the horses as they galloped in circles around the Piazza. 3 times around, jockeys fell off, (I had to briefly look away) and horses fell on the track. Certain horses took the lead for a lap, and then fell totally behind, allowing other horses to gain speed. Finally, (also not seen by me!) a horse finished! An eruption from the crowd let me and other vertically challenged viewers know that the race had finished, and the Contrada Selva emerged victorious! (The CET students had each picked a Contrada out of a hat at random, and my Contrada was Leocorno, so I did not win the lottery)

The race left us all breathless! After 2 weeks in Siena, with nonstop talk of the Palio, we had witnessed it, and it was incredible. We are lucky though, because the pageantry and excitement of the Palio will not cease, as there is another race in August. Unfortunately for me, the winning Contrada, (who after winning the Palio will parade around the city with flags and drumming and singing and carrying on) lives very close to my apartment J Extra constant drumming for this ragazza!

Other notable events:

When I go shopping, which I do way too frequently….I speak in Italian now! It’s really exciting, (even though the sales person usually answers me in English) but I love being able to communicate, even just a bit!

I have a language partner named Alessandro! We meet once a week and walk around the city. He usually orders a beer in a bar, and we speak in my limited Italian, or his fantastic English. He works for an international company and is very keen to better his English (he knows words like unique, bizarre, and exponentially, whereas I still do not know the word for chair…) But it’s really nice to be able to use my Italian and help someone learn more English.

I had a really off day in Italian class this week- I showed up like 5 minutes late because I wanted to finish eating an omelet I had made- so sue me!- which displeased my teacher a little bit to begin with. Then, in class I was bitten 3 times by mosquito! I was completely distracted and in the middle of his longwinded explanation of something or other, I found the little sucker and “SMACK” killed it out of the air! Not only did I startle him, I tried to play it cool and wipe the mosquito away and resume paying (very little) attention, but the blood the mosquito had stolen from me ended up all over my hands! It was so gross! And I was totally unable to play it off like it hadn’t happened. I literally had blood on my hands J So I had to excuse myself – lets remember Teach is already a little perturbed at me. After washing my hands in the bathroom, a wave of sleepiness came over me, and I literally fell asleep (in a class with two students, there is no such thing as hiding sleep) Luckily, My teacher doesn’t hate me too much, and I was much better the next day to make up for my off day.

And finally, a story I must include. There is a little bakery next to where we take Italian classes, and I go in very often, just to look at all the delicious treats and breads, never to actually buy. The other day when I went in, the guy behind the counter was really sweet and gave me a batch of free cookies, per niente! For nothing! I was thrilled J It is little charms like this that make me fall even more in love with Italy than I already am J

Finally! Last Little story! We threw a 4^th of July party in my apartment! It was really fun and everyone contributed an American dish, or drink to the party. We invited some Americans we had met a couple days earlier, and my Italian roommate invited some of his Italian friends- an international party! I created a USA play list complete with DMB, Frank Sinatra, Tom Petty, the Boss, etc and everyone wore red, white, and blue J

OKAY! Wow, I just wrote an essay! Ciao!

Elena Korn

CET Siena Student Correspondent, Summer '10

Pre-Palio Excitement!

On July 2^nd (tomorrow!) Siena will be holding their twice-annual Palio tournament! (Il Palio tournament is explained in greater detail in an earlier post) I should start off by saying that the Sienese people are simply “Pazzi per Palio!” Crazy for Il Palio! The excitement and anticipation of the event is buzzing through the streets of Siena- it is impossible to miss. There has been a monumental influx of tourists for the event (which makes getting to my 9 am class through the crowded streets more difficult…) and the entire city is adorned with the vibrant colors of each Contrada’s flags! Sienese people have been wearing the flags of their Contrada every day this week (these little flags are given to them at birth and are worn until death at every Palio during their lifetime) and there are constant parades. Literally, constant! It is almost impossible to move through the streets without hearing the chants of Contrada songs echoing from nearby, getting caught up in a marching parade with drummers, trumpeters, little kids to young adults to elderly men dressed in full costume (they look somewhat like medieval jesters) parading through the narrow streets of Siena. Cannons go off frequently, bells ring throughout the day, fights break out between Contrada members, horses are marched through the streets with massive groups of men behind them, singing at the top of their lungs in Italian. The city has become somewhat of a huge circus! You really cannot go 5 minutes without running into some form of Palio celebration-let alone get sleep at night with the round-the-clock partying going on in the city. (Did I mention that the surrounding of the Piazza del Campo is completely covered in mud and some horseshit? It is unreal how they transform the piazza into a racetrack!)

I was extremely lucky to get to witness the lottery of the horses in the Palio race! After class, I stood in the packed Piazza (sun beating down) for about an hour before the festivities began. First, from different directions, enormous groups of men and women stormed the Piazza shouting their Contrada song, (like armies might storm a small village chanting their national anthem so there is no mistaking who they are.) This happened three or four times from different directions- So exciting! Trumpeting began, and the mayor and other dignitaries from Siena came on to a huge stage in the front of the Piazza (lets remember that the Piazza is absolutely huge-.22 miles around) Horses were paraded through the crowds, and from where I was standing, I was directly in front of the horses as they walked by so I got a great view! Sienese men around me were holding little booklets with the names of all the horses being paraded through and keeping track of which was which. The men take the horse lottery very seriously, as I will explain shortly.

Finally the lottery of the horses began. I could use the cliché’ “a hush fell over the crowd” or I could describe that the thousands of people in the Piazza at that moment, literally, began whispering. It was as close to silent as you can get with thousands of people! It was mind-blowing!

As the mayor picked the lottery numbers and called them out into the microphone, there was either an explosion of applause, silence, or sounds of distress in patches throughout the crowd. The Sienese people keep such good track of the horses being picked from, they know if the horse their Contrada receives is a good horse or a “not so good horse.” I had heard that the Sienese people get very enthusiastic about the horses allotted to them, but I was not prepared for the kinds of reactions I saw around me. When the horse was drawn for the “Onda” Contrada on my right, men began screaming, cursing, stamping the ground, spitting-it was unbelievable! They looked crazy, young and old just thrashing about in their area of the crowd before walking furiously towards the front to collect their apparently “not so good” horse. The men had scowls on their faces and pushed through the crowds with no regard for those in their way! In contrast, when the “Nicchio” Contrada was allotted their horse, the teenage girls who had been standing behind me burst into tears of joy and squealed, hugging and kissing each other as if they had just seen a celebrity! They were literally sobbing! Elderly men and woman marched to the front of the Piazza with their hands on their faces, weeping! It was such an unbelievable sight! The girls sprinted up to the front to help collect their horse- I later learned “Nicchio” had received one of the best horses in the Palio this year, and would be favored to win.

When each of the 10 running Contradas received their horses and escorted them off the campo and back to their respective Contradas, the ceremony was over, and the rest of the people in the Piazza began to disperse. Smaller tussles broke out in pockets of the crowd where members of rival Contradas butted heads, but all began to calm down after the ceremony.As an American living in Durham, North Carolina, I have witnessed my fair share of sports fanaticism (Duke vs. UNC- one of the biggest rivalries in College basketball history) But I have never in my life seen the animation and emotion from young and old poured into a game as I have so far witnessed of the Palio. (My labeling the Palio a “game” might even cause some Sienese to take offense- however, I mean none!) My Italian roommate Gianluigi explained to me that a Sienese person’s Contrada is forever-“he may cheat on his wife, he may cheat on his friends, he may steal or lie, but he will never cheat on his Contrada.” Il Palio is certainly no game to the people of Siena, and while as a semi-tourist I may never fully understand the importance, even sacredness of the Palio, I can certainly see, and feel the ferocious loyalty and pride that it creates in the hearts of the Sienese people.

And all this before the actual event! Next blog will describe the actual Palio, if I make it to the other side of the event to tell the tale!

Elena Korn

CET Siena Student Correspondent, Summer '10

One Month in Italy!

In two days, it will be my official one-month anniversary of living in Siena. And so far, I think I have crammed more into this month than one year at school in the US. That may be a little dramatic, but I can illustrate (with text and photos!!) my point. I suppose travelling first comes to mind when I think of how I’ve been spending my time here. My friends and I took a day trip to Florence and Volterra, a small Tuscan town, and on a field trip for our art history class, we went to San Gimignano, another tiny Tuscan town. I had heard that San Gimignano was a very beautiful place, but you really just have to see it to truly appreciate it. It was a very calm and quiet village with one street reserved for murmuring tourists and families. We climbed the tower connected to the city hall which looks over San Gimignano and the Tuscan countryside and then fled down the steep stairs to have ice cream at a world-renowned gelato shop. So it wasn’t really your standard field trip.

This past weekend, we made an excursion to Cinque Terre, a fabulous choice on our part. Cinque Terre is in the region just to the north of Tuscany, in Liguria, so it only took a few hours to get there. We stayed in hotels in La Spezia and then took a train into the first of the small five towns on the rugged coastline. There’s one point on the train ride where you are in a tunnel for a few minutes, and when the train emerges from the darkness, all you can see is bright blue water and the mountainous coastline. The first time seeing it is so stunning, and it’s not really a vision you ever get over. We hiked the most difficult trail on the first day and then left the rest for the second day. This was a great decision, I think, because I woke up on day number two with legs feeling like the size of Russia. Getting out of bed was rough, but I was motivated by the fact that the weekend here had cost me at least 100 euro. So on day two, I pushed through the pain of my aching body and enjoyed the three hikes we did between four towns. We went swimming at our favorite of the five towns, Vernazza, and ate pizza and gelato. I just don’t think I could ask for a better Sunday.

This sums up my travels here so far. This Friday is Il Palio, the huge horse race and festival in Siena, so we will be staying here for the weekend to celebrate. This also means that my wallet can recover and prepare for the next time I travel. In the meantime, between horse races and travelling, there has been a lot of gelato, so much so that I think it’s worthy of some reflection. I am keeping a mental journal of all the different types I’ve had and my reactions to them. So far, I’ve had hazelnut, pistachio, toffee, white chocolate, white chocolate with nutella, yogurt with nutella, vanilla with chocolate chips, vanilla with white chocolate, chocolate with nuts, milk with graham crackers, crème, chocolate, nutella with bread, dark chocolate, and nutella. The key is to get something different every time, unless you’re having a bad day. Then you have to go to your old standby which for me is white chocolate and hazelnut together on a cone. Just thinking about it reminds me that tomorrow is Thursday which means it’s free gelato day sponsored by CET. Excellent, but now the only problem is that I have twenty-four hours to deliberate what flavor I’m going to get. Meh, I can’t ever go wrong, for it all tastes so right.

Melissa Mitchem

CET Siena Student Correspondent, Summer '10