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Tonight we are at the very tip of the peninsula in Sirmione. Our clients have been asking us to stay here for several years and we have resisted because it is too touristy but we finally gave in to try it.
Even in this low season it is bonkers crowded. We anticipated that so we got a hotel that has parking, so we would not have to fuss with where we could leave the car.
However, that means that you drive through the (ZTL, limited traffic zone) to get there.
Your license plate is registered before you arrive and when you pull up to the gate it automatically gives you entry.
That makes you feel pretty cool and very special until you realize that you have to drive in these extremely tight quarters past hundreds of people who are so close you can reach out and pick their pockets. There are very few cars here because it is a limited traffic zone, so it is basically like a pedestrian zone, and you feel quite aggressive driving through it even if you are only going one mile per hour.
10 years ago we would both have had a stroke at the prospect of doing this but now we can handle it, though I suspect this would be too much for most of our clients. Believe it or not, this video starts AFTER we were in much thicker crowds.
Huge presentation at the Chestnut Festival tonight in our town of Soriano which included presentations from all four neighborhoods.
Our "rione" (neighborhood) San Giorgio features fire breathers. When you see those explosions of fire, that is the girls putting flammable liquid in their mouths and lighting it as they spray it out.
Nearly everyone reading this page will recognize this as a Christmas tune.
This is our "rione" (neighborhood) San Giorgio, at the start of their procession.
We feel like we are a part of this place and also so very foreign. But we both feel full of pride when we see this and say "this is my neighborhood".
We are so grateful to live here. 🇮🇹
Trumpets, drums, and cathedral bells. Bells just can't compete with the trumpets! An astounding sound experience
They brought a harpsichord out here and a viola da gamba!!!
At the Chestnut Festival right now!
The Festival is On!
The Chestnut Festival here in Soriano is huge, and it pretty much takes over the entire month of October. Each “Rione” (neighborhood) has its own drum beat, trumpet call, uniforms, history, foods… much more than I can describe here. We now know the trumpet call and drum beat of our rione “San Giorgio.” I look like a crazy person every year when these neighborhood kids come by our house in procession, because I am always crying. Who is this crazy woman in tattered clothing with tears on her face? they probably think. I can’t explain it but I just get super emo every freaking year. We belong here, but we also don’t. I feel extremely privileged to just be here and witness it.
Here is a little video. The kids just marched past our house. We heard them coming from a ways away, and we ran outside to see them (taking great care to change from our tattered pajamas into our tattered bed-to-daywear collection of old-ass clothes, so we looked respectable, of course).
At the end of the video you can hear the trumpet call. You can see our neighbors Giuseppina and Pietro out on their balcony just above our door. (You may have read about them and their incredible kindness and generosity in our book.)
We are so grateful to live here.
Weird Grocery Store Snacks: Cola chips edition
It’s almost Festival Time!
Every year our town of Soriano holds an epic Chestnut Festival, which has food, medieval costumes, falconers, swordplay, trumpets and drums, acrobats, museum exhibits, fire-breathers, and chestnuts, of course. The town’s teenagers and young adults practice drums and trumpets for weeks in advance. Each neighborhood (“rione”) has their own history of course, with costumes, and specialized entertainment (e.g. flag throwers, firebreathers, acrobats…) , and particular tunes and drum beats.
It is astounding, what they do. Right now they are just practicing, and the echoes of the trumpets and drums off the hillsides are impossible to ignore. I could watch this for the next 50 years and not get tired of it. We are so excited! If you are anywhere in the area check out the “Sagra delle Castagne” website (link in comments). We have tix for October 19 night, and there are still lots of tickets available!
We are so grateful to live here.
We are up in Chianti for a wedding today.
After we finished playing the ceremony, the couple walked out of this medieval church to the sound of ringing bells.
Read first, then watch video. If you listen carefully, you can hear the “boing” of the hair pulling at the top.
We were practicing a bit together tonight, and Matt reminded me of this thing he used to do in orchestra when a long winded conductor would stop rehearsal to explain some miniscule point to us all, blabbing and pontificating as we all had to sit and listen while they dissected some tiny point to an absurd degree. Of course, as the orchestra, we were not permitted to speak or leave, we just had to sit there and listen for however long these symposiums took. (We sometimes called this “Maestrobating”).
Here is a little routine he used to do, “Splitting Hairs”, that he would act out from the back of the cello section. I sat Assistant Principal Second Violin, which is about one millimeter from the conductor’s face, so I could not react to this as I saw Matt acting it out, and had to do my best not to laugh or even crack a smile, even though cello players around him were chortling. But I had to pretend to look not just interested, but deeply engaged, as the wisdom splattered down from the podium. I think I did some liver damage in there, holding in a belly laugh.
