Along came February, and in some corner of my mind I dusted off the memory of a mystical, almost mythical, annual orange battle in some small Italian village about which I had previously heard bits and pieces whispered between young world travelers in hostel bunks or boasted over beer steins in some international pub. I hear that hundreds of people - no, thousands - gather from all over the world to throw oranges at each other, from atop buildings and from trees. They camp out for days waiting for it to start. Every year someone dies. In reality it occurs in part to celebrate Mardi Gras, and in part to honor the historical uprising of the common people against tyrannical nobles around the time of the French Revolution. Among other symbolic events that take place throughout the five days of Carnevale, the throwing of the oranges is supposedly intended to remember the Ivreans' "fight for liberty." The event even has a website, which explained the existence and history of the nine teams who actually compete for first place. When I realised that this event was in fact real, and safe, and extremely close to Torino, I decided to enlist the merry company of four friends to investigate.
Here we are, pre-battle.
We took a train up from Torino on Saturday night to check into our hostel and mosey around town before the evening's parade and ceremonies. Along the way we ran into a red-headed and freckled Italian youth named Boris who attempted to direct us toward a pizzeria but succeeded only in creeping us out of being hungry. Our hostel had once been Salesian monestary, and we shared it with a large group of elderly Scottish bagpipers who practiced on the sprawling outdoor lawn the pieces they would play in tomorrow morning's parade. We put our backpacks down in the room, chose bunks, and ran outside to listen to bagpipes in the dying afternoon sun. What a start to the weekend.
The orange battle was just part of a series of intensely awesome events, including a bean lunch that apparently originates from the Middle Ages when some noblewoman gave a handful of beans to some peasants. Over the years, that act of benificience evolved into ten or fifteen humongous vats of beans simmering overnight in an empty piazza that fills to the brim the next morning with people lining up for a deep bowl of bean stew, hunks of hearty bread, and tiny plastic cups of cold red wine. Yes, we ate beans and drank wine at 11am on a cold Sunday. Only in Italy, right?
There were parades, opening ceremonies involving the Miller's Daughter and her Entourage (better explained on the website), cotton candy, riverside fireworks, and more mulled wine than was good for me! And then, of course, the battle itself, which took place from 14,00-16,30 on Sunday, Monday and Tuesday. Horses pulled carts of helmeted team members into other teams' piazzas, where participants hurled oranges at each other with alarming ferocity while judges and spectators watched. The five of us had prime spots in the centralmost piazza for the start of the Battle and, aside from being thoroughly and continuously astonished at the overall event, I think the most memorable thing about it was that from the physical and botanical carnage rose the sharp yet delicate odor of oranges that - so one Ivrea resident tells me - stays in the city for nearly one month after the festivities have finished. Over the course of the Carnevale pedestrian traffic would mix the orange rinds and pulp into a disgusting paste with horse manure and other garbage, hence the boots you see in our group photo, but we didn't see the worst of it as we stayed only for the first day.
It was one of the most incredible things I have ever seen. On one hand, ridiculous; but on the other, somewhat poignant as it's the singular reason for which this tiny village is known in Italy. The deep pride behind these labors was evident in the teams' posture, the musicians' step, the clipped prancing of the ponies, and the long complete silence in which thousands of Italians, young and old, and at least five Americans, turned their eyes heavenward to watch almost half an hours' worth of fireworks explode overhead.
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