During my time in Venice, I met two other lone travellers and we formed an inseparable trio for the duration of the visit. Even though we were under strict instructions from the owner of our youth hostel to follow his self-guided walking tour of Venice and visit the glass-blowing island of Murano, we got distracted after the first stage of the tour – the seaside resort island of Lido.

An old man on the vaporetto water bus across the Lagoon of Venice informed us that if we liked football, we should get ourselves to the Venice vs. Novara match at 2pm. We said that we’d consider it after our picnic lunch, during which we watched hundreds of men stream off the various vaporetti and head towards the local stadium. At first we were confused – “Mid-afternoon on a Thursday? These Italians must love their football!?!” – but then we realised that it was the All Saints’ Day public holiday.

Cutting a long story short, we went, and the atmosphere was electric. The most notable factor (well, for us anyway) was the constant drone of cheers. We were perched between the two Venice cheer squads, and those who had the nerve to barrack for Novara were at the opposing end. The interesting thing was that each cheer squad was orchestrated by a cheer leader who kept the group going with various instructions of what to say and when and how to clap.

My favourite cheer involved everyone spinning their team scarves above their heads, helicopter-style, which reminded me of a French song of group frivolity.

The first – and so far only – time I’ve heard Patrick Sébastien’s ‘Tourner Les Serviettes’ (‘To turn the serviettes’) was at a wedding reception near Bordeaux. It’s an energetic song with a techno beat that would make any Ukrainian village wedding participant green with envy. Basically, after hours of indulging, the DJ launches this track and everyone forgets the greasy smears from the magret de canard, and throwing care (and bread crumbs) to the wind, starts to twirl their napkins above their heads.


Not my personal shenanigans, but a similar endeavour…

When it began, I thought I had been instantly transported to a new planet somewhere in the outer realms of the universe.

Needless to say, it didn’t take long before I was standing on my chair too, turning my serviette as if there was no tomorrow!