Down Feathers on the Wind

The clouded sky overhead added a mysterious atmosphere to the piazza; it was the perfect setting for the young students who were silently congregating in twos and threes. Others entered the scene with oddly shaped bags. Some came to the piazza carrying their goods without the benefit of department store totes; the misplaced nature of the pillows screamed for attention. Who carries a pillow around a piazza in Bologna, Italy?

Apparently the students of Bologna do.

I continued eating my lunch, while watching the pillow-carrying students. What was going on? My friends were just as interested. Luckily we had just gone on break from the rigors of yet another “Helen Trip,” and we had the next hour to ourselves. . . surely something would happen before that time was up.

Twenty minutes passed, but the most exciting thing that happened was MORE students filing into the piazza with, you guessed it, individual pillows.

My friends and I, freezing from the dampness of the moist, cloudy day, decided that we would walk around the piazza in search of a bar (Italian Café) where we would buy cappuccinos and continue to watch the piazza for action.

As we were crossing the piazza the clock in the piazza stuck three in the afternoon, and a loud bell sounded.

Nothing happened at first. Then, suddenly, a dull roar began to reverberate off the walls of surrounding buildings. The roar grew louder, and almost as if it were the starting cue, students simultaneously began converging on the center of the piazza with their pillows raised in attack!

A massive pillow fight broke out! Student beat their friends. Students hit other students they didn’t know. Students jumped up on friends shoulders and attacked the unsuspecting from above. Feathers were everywhere and students toppled to the ground in an attempt to get away from other ferocious pillow mobsters. Fluffs of cotton were carried away on the wind and pillows were, one-by-one, shredded to pieces.

When my friends and I finished our cappuccino break half an hour later, the pillow fight was still in full-swing amongst the victorious. Who would win?!

Helen shooed us along to other art historical sites before we could answer that question, but when we returned to the piazza just before heading back to Florence, not a trace of the fight was left. . . except for maybe some meager down feathers, too small for anyone to notice under the cover of the night sky.