(not so) Quiet Riot
I live a little bit north of the center of Rome, and I take a bus to get to all of the main attractions of the city. Its not a long bus ride and its actually pretty nice and relaxing, usually.
The bus that I ride passes directly in front of Stadio Olimpico, where AS Roma plays their home games. I always like that part of the ride, especially on game days. Everyone is wearing Roma jerseys and are waving huge flags. Its quite festive and fun.
A week ago I had a lovely day in the center of town (I might blog about that someday). As I was boarding the bus, I knew that Roma had a home game that day, but I was unaware that their opponent was the hated, Lazio.
As the bus began to approach the stadium I noticed that there were hundreds of people in the street, running away from the event. There were so many people in the street that the bus could no longer move. After some time the people began to clear out a bit and we were able to get closer to the action. Several hundred polizia in full riot gear, thousands of drunken Romans fighting because they hate the others team of choice.
Everyone on our bus was told to sit on the floor (not a small feat, but definitely disgusting) and the polizia began to use our bus as a barrier to launch tear gas, and flares over. People were jumping on the sides of the bus, shaking it. Flares and tear gas going off all around sounded like shotguns. I saw at least 5 cars on fire (I found out later that one car was set on fire with people inside - thankfully they were not hurt).
The whole situation was out of control. It was quite exciting, but I was SO glad to be on the bus, I would have been scared silly if I didn't have the barrier of a bus to protect me. After a long time we finally were able to continue on our route, and I arrived back home safely.
Here is a video of the mayhem. At about 7 minutes there are two busses that come around the corner, I am on the first bus.
