Thursday, June 29, 2006

HAMMER TIME!

I've been around the world, from London to The Bay, and never seen anything so odd...

Porto, like all Portuguese cities, has an annual festival honoring the city's "popular" saint. Most of these events involve parading the saint's statute to and from a few churches, a parade, late-night celebrating in the streets, etc. Mind you, the southern Europeans like to stay up late, and these things can begin as late as midnight and go until dawn.

Porto's celebration, while in many ways traditional, has a very strange twist.

Porto's most popular saint is John the Baptist, who, for the un-Sunday-schooled, was ordered beheaded by King Herod. His festival happened to fall during the few days we had scheduled to be in town. Unsure what to expect, we got a hotel room facing away from the street and hoped for the best. Stopping by the tourist information office for a map, we picked up an event schedule for the festival. The schedule noted that we could stop by the office the next day for our free "play hammer" so we would be ready when the festival got started.

Turns out, the most popular part of the festival involves hitting total strangers over the head with plastic squeaking hammers as they walk by. We were very skeptical, to say the least. This is clearly a country with a lawyer shortage! How could this be a good idea? We decided to go hammer-less, afraid that carrying a hammer would mark us as combatants and increase the chance of hammer-related violence towards our persons.

Heading down the hill to the river, we saw many folks carrying said hammers, but didn't see any hammer-related action. Brandon, absorbed with the technical side of videotaping something that caught his eye, was taken completely aback when he found himself the victim of a sharp rap on the head. While his 'fro deflected the worst of the assault, the shock and surprise may have subtracted a few days from his lifespan.

It seemed no one was safe from the hammer's fury. Finding a local hammer vender, we accelerated the arms race with our own weapon. Now armed with plastic hammer, we headed to the city waterfront at the appointed hour, where we indeed observed the locals bopping each other over the head with glee.

It took only a few moments for us to join in the fray. Brandon exploited his clear height and reach advantage over the Portuguese, bobbing with abandon and often with impunity. Megan, ever the jurist, took to dishing out retribution bonks to those in the crowd who sought to sneakily bop the defenseless and unaware. She adopted the moniker "Spiderman," for her even-handed distribution of justice for the downtrodden.

Much to our surprise, no fights ensued and we heard few complaints, even as the hour grew late and the alcohol flowed. In the end, the Portuguese endurance won out, and we headed back uphill to our room around 3 a.m. as still hundreds poured downhill. The sounds of reveling continued until dawn.

How does this all tie into John the Baptist? Our best theory: your head is still attached, so celebrate!

3 Comments:

At Wed Jul 12, 11:43:00 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Megan, Your trip sounds wonderful--something for me to dream about (maybe next year when I retire). Beautiful scenery. Enjoy your trip & keeps sending pictures/comments.
Vicky

 
At Wed Jul 26, 09:45:00 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Yo, this blog hasnt been updated in over a month!!! Im using this as my homepage Megan, c'mon, give me something.

 
At Tue Aug 01, 08:29:00 PM, Blogger Brandon_Megan said...

Sorry Ron! Surprisingly, it proved nearly impossible to find affordable internet cafes in the UK! More blog for ya now...

 

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