CINQUINA!!

Last night my roommates and I got bored. You would think that in Rome that was impossible, but after a long day of walking and riveting discussion of timeless pieces of literature, coming back to an apartment that has no T.V. or internet is, sadly, a little bit dull. So we did what any other 20 year old college students would do in this situation, we went and played Bingo. We entered a room to glances and glares and glares of "Americano," but that didn't matter we had our game faces on and were ready to win some Euro. A man that looked in charge pointed us to a table that was occupied by two ladies. Big surprise, they didn't speak a word of English, so asking them how to play this Italian version of bingo was a little bit of a chore but we got the gist of it pretty quickly. We were given our bingo cards that had 15 numbers on them. If you get 5 of these numbers in one row then you yell Cinquina! and you win the cinquina minimum (in our case around 10 Euro). After someone gets cinquina they keep calling numbers until someone fills their card and yells Bingo! and that person wins between 50-150 Euro, depending on the number of players. A simple game and for one Euro a card it seemed like a bargain. After 5 games and Neanderthal like communication with the two women next to us (who we speculated were adult performers of some sort) something amazing happened. On card number six my roommate Jared who must have pleased the Gods earlier in the day, hit Bingo on the biggest pot of the day. He won 137 Euro and life was good. We celebrated with a plate of French fries and we returned for round two a few hours later where I lost my remaining 10 Euro. Money well spent.