Notte Bianco - un'altra bella festa

The festivals just keep on coming, each relentlessly offering more opportunities to sample new food, drink more wine, and soak up more cultural experiences. Last Saturday Genova had it's night of nights, the "Notte Bianco" (white night). There is no deep historical story, patron saint, or crop harvesting that motivates the Notte Bianco, it's just a big street party - and big it was. At midnight, over 700,000 people were apparently packed into the streets of Genova. That, in itself is impressive enough, but it's even more impressive when you consider that Genova's population is only 600,000. Of course, mention this to a Roman, or a Milanese, and they will waste no time in telling you how small and pathetic this is in comparison with their own notti bianci. In any case, Genova's capacity was well and truly exceeded, to the point of rediculousness at times, so 700,000 pathetic attendees seemed like more than enough for me.

Aff and I met up with a few other friends from my work, and spent the night wandering the streets. Many of Genova's most significant piazzas played host to all kinds of entertainment, from medievil reenactments, to the all too familiar sounds of cheesy Italian pop (thank God Italy doesn't enter eurovision .. it just wouldn't be a fair contest). We watched fire works down at the port, danced in the streets, all the while keeping ourselves well and truly at cruising level with molta birre, e rum con red bull. The idea, after all, was to party all night.

One of the more interesting, and unique opportunities of the night, was the possibility of visiting one of Genova's main tourist attractions, The "Acquario di Genova" (the Aquarium). Open until 5.30am, and offering half price entry, and a free breakfast at the end of the night, this was very high on my priority list. Aff and I had not visited the Aquarium, much to the disgust of locals we dare admit this to (though we attempt to disperse this disapointment by explaining that we haven't even visited Melbourne's aquarium). As such, a half price, 5am visit to a major Genovese attraction seemed like a perfectly good idea. Leaving ourselves a questionable 45 minutes before official closing time, Aff and I said our "buona notte's" to our friends (who didn't seem to be as keen on a late night aquarium visit), and joined the back of a queue of around 20 or so others. The line was moving steadily, and all seemed perfectly in place for us to cap off a great night among the fish - that is, until 5am, when we had reached the front of the queue, only to watch the shutters of the ticket window close before us. And there we stood, along with our fellow queue dwellers, staring in bemusement at the closed window.

There are many things I admire about the "Italian way". None more so than there complete self assurity and belief that there is always a way to achieve something, despite all evidence to the contrary. Sure, the ticket window was closed, and there was not sign of an aquarium employee to be found, but this did not stop them (and by association, Aff and I) from walking from the ticket booth, to the stairs leading up to the aquarium. A security guard awaited us. It was pretty clear that the security guard was under strict instructions to not allow anyone in. It was equally clear that the security guard had no clout with the establishment, and was not going to be able to fight on our behalf. This, however, did not stop some of the more vocal Italians in our group (about 18 of the 20 of us) from explaining at length, and with full Italian hand gestures at work, what injustice this was to shut us all out. Interestingly, the security guard did seem to be quite happy to engage in the dialogue. Aff and I watched, waiting to see if we were about to witness some great insight into the way Italian society works. Would the people have there way ? Would we walk gloriously into the aquarium, see our fish, and devour our well deserved free breakfast ?

About 10 mninutes later, the police turned up, and we were asked to leave, and so we all did.

After a sneaky kebab from our favourite late night out kebab shop, and a 10 minute walk home, Aff and I were nicely tucked up in bed by 5:45am.

Un'altra bella festa in Italia!

Now for some photos. You may get a sense that the evening had two distinct phases...