La Partita A Scacchi - The Game of Chess

About 30 minutes north of our house is the beautiful walled city of Marostica. In 1454, two noblemen, Rinaldo D'Angarano and Vieri da Vallonara, both fell in love with the same woman; Lionora, the daughter of Taddeo Parisio, the Lord of Marostica Castle. As was the custom in that day, the two gentlemen challenged each other to duel to win the hand of the fair maiden.

However Taddeo Parisio forbade the duel as he did not want to risk losing one of his brave knights. On the other hand, he did not want to offend their families by arbitrarily deciding the issue. He struck upon the idea that the two suitors should play a chess match, and the winner of said match would receive Lionora's hand in marriage, while the loser would still join his family be marrying Lionora's younger sister, Oldrada.

Parisio's Proclamation: "Thus we repeat that such single, bloody duel ought in no way to take place under pain of death for the transgressor, and we order instead that the challenge will be a noble game of chess and the winner will have as reward marriage with Madonna Lionora, and that such game be played on the twelfth of September 1454, upon the big square of the Castle between tall and living pieces, all armed and marked with the noble colours of Black and White, and said challenge be honoured with a display of armoured men and fireworks and public illumination and dances and music".

The first re-enactment of this epic event took place on it's 500th anniversary in 1954. And it has been re-enacted on every even numbered year since. Well after all that, we just had to go!

There were huge throngs of people clamoring to take their seats in the grandstands overlooking Marostica's townsquare. The grandstands surround the square on three sides with the great castle gate along the fourth edge. Since it was the first night, the ushers were having a tough time managing the crowd. The redhead and I took a few wrong turns, and progress through the crowd was slow, but finally we managed to jostle ourselves up the steep bleacher steps to our very tiny seats (The seats were really tiny. I think Emma would have fit perfectly. As for me, my fat butt sort of spilled over the sides. I felt bad for the lady sitting next to me...)

The event started about 30 minutes late (AKA Italian Time), and the lights dimmed over the square. The torches in the high windows of the castle gate gave an eerie glow of anticipation...

A booming voice filled the night air and demanded that the archers fire their arrows to commence the show. Two fiery bolts flew down from the tower and set the chessboard ablaze!


After that great beginning there were several processionals of dancers, jugglers, and merchants.


Taddeo Parisio and his two daughters enter the townsquare to oversee the proceedings. And they were followed in by several noble families with their attendants.


Every phase of the show was full of festivity and pageantry. Phalanxes of halbardiers, crossbowmen, and mounted knights, were followed by drummers, standard bearers and falconers. And ever single person was in full costume and regalia... Even the cameramen!


Quite comfortable in their masculinity, the Italian men dress up in colorful tights and proceed with the twirling of the pretty flags!




After much anticipation and with great fanfare, the living chess pieces emerge from the mouth of the castle gate and take the field!



The game proceeded with the two noblemen making their moves on a small chessboard, and the herald calling out each move so that the living pieces could follow suit. After roughly 12 moves, White, in stunning fashion, sacrificed his Queen to open up a lane for his rook! On the next move, the White rook comes down and crushes the Black King. Checkmate!

As promised, Parisio marries the two couples in the middle of the townsquare.



And to complete the celebration the lights are once again dimmed and the night sky explodes with showers of fireworks.


Despite the fact that I couldn't feel my legs after sitting in my cramped seat for so long, the event was incredible to watch. The pageant won't be shown again until September of 2010, so if you would like to witness this unique event, plan your trips accordingly.

VIVA SAN MARCO!
VIVA MAROSTICA!
e VIVA SCACCHI!

La nostra casa in Italia.

We apologize for the long delay in getting our blog updated but there was a lot of important, but not necessarily "blog worthy" activities over the past couple of months. To force ourselves to resurrect the blog, we decided to try a tag team approach. Stuff I wrote is in Blue. Stuff Cyn wrote is in red.

First Cindy Lou Who went back to the US of A for a little family time. She had a really good trip in Minnesota and Seattle. Mike was too stupid to go for that vacation stuff, and proceeded to work for 3 weeks straight without a day off. Our warriors came back from Afghanistan and as part of the return process they all needed to be checked out by the clinic docs, so we were running 7 days a week. On top of that we were scheduled for a computer audit for the end of July, and us computer guys could only do our thing after the clinic closed. So while Cynthia was whooping it up on vacation, I lived alone for 3 weeks and did nothing but sleep on borrowed furniture and go to work. Oh that and we bought a new car. A sweet, 2.5 Liter VW Rabbit. We call it the "Blue Bunny".

We live in a little town called Montecchio Precalcino, just north of Vicenza. Here's a picture of our house:

Oh no... wait... This is our house:

Luckily Christmas came early for us when we received our household goods from Hawaii mid August. We opened box after box delighting in the contents and glad to have our familiar things around us. Of course there were some, “Why the heck did we pack this?! as we peered into a box with some worthless or obscure value. Only 3 items were damaged: 2 scratches on furniture, and one completely busted LCD TV. We're filing a claim for that one!

There are distinct differences in an Italian home when compared to homes in the US. For example – there are no closets – Seriously. Every room is just 4 walls, a door, and a window. No place to put your clothes. No hall closet for the linens. The bathrooms don't have towel racks or a medicine chest, or even a toilet roll dispenser! We ended up buying an "armadio"; a super duper armoir from a local furniture place. We are very fortunate that our place came with a very nice kitchen cupboards since Italians treat the kitchen cupboards and sinks like furniture – they take it with them when they move. We also have really nice windows, but there are no screens, so it's BugCity every time we try to catch a cool breeze. And cool breezes were hard to come by this summer. It has been "Caldo, Caldo, Caldo" over here. Some weeks we're up in the "30's", that's high 90's to low 100's for you Fahrenheit-loving Americans. And yet oddly enough we still had the occasional HAIL STORM every once in awhile. The weather is freaky. I can't wait until winter.

Electricity and the various wall outlets are another challenge. So Europe, as we were well informed, is on the 110 voltage as USA is on 220 volts (OK Cynthia wrote that last sentence. She's lived here for 4 months and she still can't get the voltage right USA=110V and Europe=220V -Mike). Making sure that all the items we are plugging into our walls is the correct voltage is one thing but we also have to use Italian adapters of various size so they will fit in the socket as one home can have multiple different sizes. And not only are the wall outlets apt to have different size holes, the stuff you're plugging in may have different size prongs. A lot of the appliances and surge strips come with German-style Schuko plugs which have fat prongs that "fit" into Italian wall outlets. But when you try to remove them, the fat prong ends up almost pulling the face plate off the wall. Mama mia (they really do say that!). The good news is that we haven’t been electrocuted and have only blown out a few light balls as we “adjusted” some of the lamps we brought from Hawaii (I also blew out a computer power supply at work. Ssshhh! Don't tell my boss. -Mike). We will be purchasing smoke detectors.

We have made several trips to the base PX, Ikea and other stores to make various purchases to get our home functional and to resemble some thing like “home.” So our Labor Day weekend was spent laboring around the house with some very good results. For those of you who will be visiting us in bella Italia – we are still working on your guest room. No problema – it will be lovely, but not for a few months, so don't start buying tickets yet! heh!

Our home domestic activities have been curbed since Cynthia aka the director of domestic operations has started working at the Army clinic in the primary care department– part time. That means three days a week. Cynthia hasn’t performed patient care in over 10 years – but the clinic was desperate and since she still has an current RN license she was hired. The hiring process for civilians usually takes months – but the right phone call from the right colonel – and just like that she was in orientation. Having never worked for the government let alone an Army clinic it has been interesting. The good news is since Cynthia is a wiz with the electronic medical record since her most recent job was teaching doctors and nurses to use them. Now she has vowed to not abuse her connections with the staff in the Information Management Department but if she has to barter with sexual favors to get her computer fixed – so be it. Cynthia says “any thing to support our guys and gals in uniform.” What a patriot! FYI – Michael works in the IMD department at the same clinic (Yeah but there are 2 other guys that work in IMD!! Let's be a little exclusive with the sexual favors, OK? And what's up with speaking in the third person?)

August was a domestic-focused month but September is looking good for some Italian adventures and in October we are headed to Tuscany (remember the movie “Under the Tuscan Sun?) to stay in a Villa and pick olives.

Hope you had a safe and happy Labor Day Weekend.

Ciao for now.