Luna Park

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I wrote this awhile ago and never finished it, so I'll just put it up now....

Last night I went with some of the students from this semester, who are all finishing up and heading out of Siena this weekend, to the Luna Park, the little amusement park/county fair they have in Siena during the summer. It’s in the middle of the Fortezza, the fortress built during the Medici reign over Siena, so it’s quite an experience to go on amusement park rides and eat too much cotton candy in an area that has been in use since the 1300s.
Italian amusement parks are a much different cup of tea than most of the amusement parks I have frequented in America. We all had a really intense experience on the bumper cars (autoscontro), and as I was sitting afterward and reflecting on the bumper cars, I thought about how Italian bumper cars are a pretty apt metaphor for many things that I love and loathe about Italian culture.
First, let’s take a step back and review some of the things I perceive as standard when it comes to bumper cars. From my experience, bumper cars are always a little crazy, but there’s always some amusement park worker who is there to regulate that nothing gets too out of control. Even if the amusement park is crowded, they don't usually fill up all of the cars, and there’s generally enough room to move around. The ‘bumper area’ is usually sectioned off from the outside by some kind of gate or barrier, so the person in charge can regulate who comes in and out of the bumper territory. I think that you are generally required to wear some kind of seat belt or restraint, and once the action begins, cars tend to move in a pretty consistent counterclockwise motion around a large rubber center island. Although it is possible to get spun around and to find yourself headed in the direction of oncoming traffic, the strong overall trend is still strongly in favor of the counterclockwise motion, and most of the bumping comes from the back and sides, with workers getting a little miffed and starting to control things if too much head-on colliding starts to occur. So, in summary, I generally think that America bumper cars are mildly wild but ultimately pretty controlled.
Now, let’s go to Italy. I hate to draw an obvious and unflattering parallel, but I found Italian bumper cars to be representative of the chaos, disregard for rules, and lack of order that characterizes many things about Italy. The first thing you notice is that there are no boundaries surrounding the ‘bumper ring’, so people are coming and going and hanging around as they please. We bought our little tokens and made our way to our tiny seat belt-less cars, and we found ourselves packed into a rather small bumper area packed to the brim with scattered cars. Once it was go-time, there was no kind of order and didn’t seem to be any rules to follow. Cars, most with two people, starting speeding and jerking and bumping in any direction, with no apparent order or rule to the movement, so everywhere you turned you came smack against another car full of an Italian duo, usually with the passenger lighting up a cigarette and smoking. That’s right- not only was there a horde of spectators smoking cigarettes, but many of the actual bumper car participants were smoking, their smoke and ashes blowing about with every collision.
Ok, so this was already pretty chaotic. Now, let's add in some loud music and some club-style strobe lights, and the feeling of confusion really starts to deepen. I personally hate strobe lights more than any other kind of light used for visual entertainment, and they always make me want to curl up in a ball with my head down until the flashing stops. When the lights started to strobe, I thought ‘Well, at least they don’t have a fog machine’, because I find the strobe light-fog machine combo to be pretty lethal for my enjoyment of organized activities. As I rounded the bend, still desperately trying to follow the age-old, comforting counterclockwise pattern and trying ardently to avoid getting bumped by anyone with a cigarette for fear that the cigarette would fly out of their hands and burn me, I was met with a horrifying puff from the fog machine in the middle of the ring. It started blowing and puffing sweet-smelling, thick fog all over, so the bumper area became a smoky confusion, with people spinning and crashing in every direction, lights strobing and music blaring overhead, and at some points all I could see through the fog were the glowing ends of the cigarette in front of me that I followed like a headlight in a storm.
We all kept going and getting jerked around, when a plastic basketball came flying through the smoke and hit the side of my head. There was a basketball hoop in the middle of the rink, and one of the objectives (if there is any ‘objective’ to bumper cars besides just bumping other cars), was to try to catch the basketball and get it in the hoop while driving around. So everyone had to hold the cigarette in one hand in order to free the other hand to try to catch the basketball and make it in the hoop.
While there are infinitely many things that I love about Italy and I could spend hours talking about them, I'll take an American amusement park any day.

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Comments

[sarah]

hehe. like a headlight in a storm :)