oste meraviglioso - friends in Summer and Autumn

Mario da oste Something I really like a lot is Monteriggioni medieval festival: this village is so much changed by the festival that it seems to be really in the medieval times. There aren't neither plastic nor electric lights around: all is made by earthenware stuff and candles lighten it. Shows and music are performed all as they could have been in those times. I, myself, dress up as a medieval ancient sir. But for the rest of the festival I enjoy more dressed by innkeeper staying behind the wine desks, which is kept into the barrels and drunk by earthenware glasses. To pay you need to have the medieval coins, scudi, and there is also an exchange-money box. After having changed today money with ancient ones you can eat to the many inns settled around into the village. You should be make aware that in those times' food recipes there weren't tomatoes neither potatoes because they came after the discovery of America. In the medieval times none even knew that continent exists. While vegetables or beans' soups and cantucci biscuits were made in those times just as are made in my own house today. If you want to taste them I can tell you where to find nice and good things.

Nowadays neither the young people of our lands really know what does it mean. This word comes from arboscello, small tree. The bruscello is a kind of comedy performed in summer in the countryside: a group of people tells tales in songs, around a tree. The bruscello theatre hasn't music; the songs were a kind of lullaby in a single tune and could be prolonged for more than an hour. In these songs were told all the story events, learned by heart by the actors. Since sixty years Montepulciano gets this theatre performance in summer. Usually in the middle of August, or few days before, they perform one of the Bruscello tradition's tales that refers to the past personalities: Pia de' Tolomei's tale is taken by Dante's Divine Comedy. Often Garibaldini's epic is performed, the tales of those who in the nineteenth century went as voluntary soldiers with Giuseppe Garibaldi for the Thousands exploit.

In Montepulciano, as in all our ancient villages, the streets are very small and with many U-bend. Not all the villages had a square big and round as that of Siena (just why called campo "the open field"). In Montepulciano on the twenty-nine of August, during the Taken off Saint John festival, the patron celebrations, the traditional horse race takes place. But, a lot of accidents occurred caused by the shape of those lanes. The village's customs and decorations are still as once upon a time, as in medieval eve, but today, instead of horses' one, the race is made by barrels as those used by the famous noble of Montepulciano. These barrels can weight until eighty KGs! In this game eight young men roll them down to the Grande square: who arrives first is the winner.

THE SECOND SUNDAY OF SEPTEMBER
In Casole's hamlet of Pievescola there is The Porcino Mushroom festival

Sagra del fungo Pievescola is a Casole d'Elsa's hamlet, well known because it has a nice very old church where many do their wedding ceremonies or make pleasant walks together. But we go to Pievescola also for Porcino Mushroom's festival. The Porcino mushroom is the most famous and it is the most spread among those of our lands: it is thought to be the best one, the king of mushrooms. We cook it in many different ways and in September when the rainy season starts, the mushroom season starts too. Here we go, very early in the morning, around the woods to look for mushrooms, trying to arrive first than anyone else. But if you don't like to spend time finding them, or one just wants to spend a night with friends, he can go for dinner at Pievescola festival and there he can have rise and Porcino, or grilled Porcinos or Pappardelle and Porcino. Then, to digest he can have a walk to the village or dance liscio.

Monteriggioni's church is dedicated to Saint Mary 'Going to the Skies' called assunta and celebrated on 15th of August, as anyone knows. But in Monteriggioni the celebration is made on the first Sunday after the seventh of October, which is the day dedicated to the Madonna of Rosary. So this year on Sunday October 7 we make a celebration bringing around in a procession the image of the Madonna outside the walls. Since few years in the morning we organise also the grapes' squeezing in the main square, as it was made once upon a time. Then, in the afternoon, it comes the musical band and girls dance, people can have a snack of sandwiches with ham or salame, have a drink of wine and make roasted chestnuts. There is a nice calm atmosphere and the last year there were the firework too. The church's priest was unsure if buying benches or fireworks for the church, with the collected money. But the people belonging to that church said they preferred the firework, that the old benches were good enough for them.

In our places, this word is used to define that kind of bird but also a kind of person a bit slow and simple. Then people say: "you are really a thrush!" But those who are in Montalcino they have never been thrush! They say that in the old times the villagers were able to make good business selling good games to the Romans. Nowadays instead they make festival for their own at home and people came from outside, not anymore the other way round. The focus of the festival still remains the fort. In the afternoon a famous game of bow is made just as it was in the medieval times. There is also the medieval parade with people dressed up in medieval customs preparing the game. For lunch and dinner we eat all we want: thrushes but also pici pasta and mixed roast-beef. And we usually drink brunello wine, which is the festival prince here, as everyone knows..

SECOND AND THIRD WEEK OF NOVEMBER
In San Giovanni d'Asso village there is the Exhibition of the White Tartufo Mushroom from the Crete Senesi area

Crete Senesi is named a geographical area south of Siena, really enchanting. The landscape is composed by bare hills, few cypress trees, here and there. The soil is clayey: can grown only grain, a bit of grasses or just nothing. Only land. But the Crete are an area full of mushrooms, especially white tartufos. We go looking for them along with our dogs and pigs. Myself, my wife, my son and my daughter in law, once went there by train since the first Sunday of the exhibition a train-holiday tour it is arranged. Early in the morning the train- tour starts from Siena. It is a steam train locomotive, one of those used in the old times. The railway cross this beautiful countryside and someone explains you the land. Around midday we reach San Giovanni where there is the exhibition and there you can have a meal with a fixed tartufo menu, very tasty. Then one can have a round of the village, the street's shops, and buy tartufo mushrooms, which, though very small are very expensive. But.. what to do? So it is.