Fiorentina Vs. Sienna

Everyone in the program went to a football game today! It was Florence (Fiorentina) versus Sienna, two rival cities in all things plus football. Florentines have a popular saying about Sienna: "Only two things come from Sienna: clouds and bitches (beetches!)." That pretty much gives you a sample of the friendly attitudes between cities.

Waiting for the bus in PIazza San Marco. This couple had huge pieces of focaccia bread. Yummy!
Lauren, AJ and Carrie with Sophie peeking in the right hand side.
The Stadio! Pay attention to it in the next couple of photos because it shows what kind of weather we sat through in the hour and a half we watched the game.

Plus rain. Sprinkly, cold rain.
Ana and Taya!
Rebecca and AJ...
Carrie
and Justin. Justin, Justin, Justin. Doin his thing!
Alot of the girls...

Sophie and her boyfriend... he who will not be named.
Rebecca and AJ under my umbrella. Just because I'm from the West Coast doesn't mean that I"m above hauling around my umbrella... I mean seriously, to not have some protection is sheer madness. MADNESS!

Ana and Taya. Taya's either yawning or super excited... you decide.

This is the section reserved for Sienna fans, or fans of whatever team is playing against Florence. Things get so rowedy that the opposing fans have to be caged in to protect them and then have an extra layer or two of security for good measure.
It's good to be prepared.... especially SUPER prepared.

Fans!
Old man smoke-stack sat right in front of my down wind so all of his cigarette smoke puffed right back into my face. Just a little touch of Europe for ever'body!

I just read most (I skipped some of the boring parts) of Tobias Jones' book The Dark Heart of Italy: Travels Through Time and Space Across Italy on the train ride to Pompeii. He had a section on football (and seduction but that's another blog post) in which he summed up the Italian game of football very well.

"Talk to any Italian about the strengths of the Italian game, and they will always mention the two vital ingredients lacking in Britain: fantasia and furbizia - the fantasy and cunning. Fantasy is the ability to do something entirely unpredictable with the ball...That's what the Italian fantasists do...it's the side of football that can't be taught. It has to be instinctive, suddenly inspired...
Many players will kiss on both cheeks before kick-off. If one scores against his old team (cause for exaltation in Britain), in Italy he refuses to celebrate... sometimes they actually break down and have a little weep (Gabriel Batistuta is a long-haired Argentine who played for Fiorentina for almost a decade. When, having signed for Roma, he scored a vital goal against his old friends, he scrunched up his face in a grimace of pain.)"
And later on the subject of performance-enhancing drugs in Italian football, Jones goes on to talk about how in the 2000-2001 season allegations of drug use began to fly and a few of the major players turned up positive (for Nandrolone). There was an outcry in the Italian public not because of the unfair advantage or the legal status of these drugs, but because it made the sport ugly. Italian football takes pride in its beauty and the drugs made it too much like the English version... "Strength and speed, the argument went, had become more important than silky skills." This is a prime example of Italian culture in general. Every aspect from the language to the body language exudes "silky skills" and romance.

More on this later. It's bed time.