Come one, come all, to Carnevale!

Want to accompany us to Carnevale?

Italy's overwhelming Catholicity means that in the days and weeks leading up to Ash Wednesday, much of the country goes a little party-happy.  The most famous Italian celebration is the Carnevale in Venice, which attracts tourists from all over the world.  However, a small Tuscan beach town called Viareggio hosts an enormous celebration every year that appears to be actually preferred by Italians. 

Whereas much of the festivities in Venice take place in invite-only parties behind closed doors, in Viareggio there are parades made up of enormous cartapesta (papier-mache) floats.

We visited the town as a day trip from Florence, on an excursion organized by Apicius and Study Abroad.  When we arrived in Viareggio, we were all dissappointed to learn that the Carnevale Museum, our first stop, was closed for the day since a float had broken and needed to be repaired.

Instead, we walked immediately down to the parade grounds, which is actually the main beachfront street.  Somehow, they close the whole neighborhood off and charge 13 euros admission - pretty impressive!

First, COFFEE.  And fritelli di riso, or sweet little rice ball fritters stuffed with cream or not, as you wish.

The street was mostly deserted when we got there.  A few people milled around in various states of costuming.

Most excitingly, the morning was being used to get the floats set up and in order for the parade, which seems to just make a giant loop up and down the street.

Pictures don't really do justice to these floats, but we tried.  Some of them were up to four stories tall, with moving parts - and it bears repeating that the vast majority of each float was made of papier-mache!

(This chef float pokes fun at avian flu and the now-past illegalization of selling steak on the bone.)

Later on, the bleachers set up in each float would be full of people dressed in matching costume, dancing and yelling and shooting silly string and foam everywhere.

This early, though, things were much quieter - the craziness to come wasn't yet evident.  So we did some shopping.

With beautiful masks like these on display, how can you not buy one?  The prices weren't even unreasonable - these above were around 12-15 euros depending on where you picked them up.

By the time the group got all set with masks and face paint and wigs and everything, things were starting to pick up a little.  Men set up in the street with large bags of confetti and displays of "foam" and silly string.  Food vendors began to advertise their wares.

How about canned corn-on-the-cob, grilled?  I was all set to jump on this until Husbear grabbed my arm and hissed "you've lost your mind - canned corn on the cob?"  Ah, yes.  You really don't see corn on the cob that often around here, and I didn't realize how much I missed it until I saw this.

We ended up grabbing an early, quick lunch from a giant movable stand set up right in the middle of the fairgrounds.  Typical fair-type food - panini, pizza, a menu completa di terra oppurre di mare...

Sorry.  The whole time we were sitting there, eating our panini and fries and drinking our wine out of a giant juice box, the announcer kept blaring over and over that you could buy a complete menu of the land or of the sea.  A three course menu, with coffee and water!  That's not something you see every day at a fair.  The Aussie with us (whose flickr account can be found here, with a hilarious picture of me here, and carnivale pics grouped here) ordered fish and chips, and recieved a rather odd mess of fried shrimp and calamari.  Just like my British grandma used to fry up.

These doughnuts also tempted us, but we had after all just eaten a big thing'a fries.

This was a great place for peoplewatching.  I really enjoyed looking at the various costumes.  It was interesting to me how this event, where people wore all manner of costumes, differed from American Halloween (not to mention Mardi Gras!).  At home, on Halloween, it seems like most people are dressed as a slutty fill-in-the-blank.  Nurse, cat, maid, vampire, dinosaur, apple, whatever.  Here, we saw none of that - the ambience was more Fourth of July with costumes and copious silly string.

We saw some ridiculously cute kids.

Some of them were definitely getting into the slightly more destructive aspects of the festival.

The dress-up was by no means limited to the kids - some adults really went all out.

This couple is dressed in the Venetian style, which is amazing but has always struck me as a little creepy.

And some were just hilarious.  You have to admire this guy, fishnets and all.  I especially love that he's wearing the World Championship T-shirt from the World Cup last summer.

By this point, just before the actual parade began, the silly string and shaving cream were flying in earnest.  Here's one of the guys we were with, just after being hit full on in the face while wearing glasses.  (Later, he actually made it on to three separate floats, so I don't think this slowed him down too much.)

And Barbara, one of the women who works at the school:

Those big Afro-wigs, by the way, were magnets for anyone who was happening to hold a can of foam or spray or a bag of confetti.  For future reference.

Many of the people we saw looked like this:

Unfortunately, the faux shaving cream didn't mix too well with this season's style of shiny puffy coats.  We saw a lot of people who were going to have substantial dry cleaning bills after the party!

Just before 3, everyone put the finishing touches onto their makeup

and with a loud burst of Italian dance music, the parade began!

I've never seen anything like these floats.  I can't imagine how much time it must take to craft these out of papier-mache! 

And, wonderfully, most of them seemed to have a political theme.  Unfortunately, we often didn't know who was being skewered...

The only Italian politician I could pick out with any degree of accuracy was Romano Prodi, who's been Prime Minister for nearly a year and was formerly President of the EC.  (UPDATE:  My goodness, I write a post saying I can recognize Prodi done in cartapesta - and he resigns?  That's sort of overkill, don't you think?) Here he is (I think) in a giant tin boat, being preceded by a huge group of people shaking blue pom-poms to represent the water.

And here's another Prodi, on what was probably our favorite float.  Here, he has on an adorable soldier's outfit and is seated on a wooden horse, with empty evil hooded characters on either side.

As you can see, the level of interaction between the viewers and the viewees was pretty high.  There was nobody keeping people out of the middle of the parade, and you were definitely expected to be the one in charge of not letting yourself get flattened by a float.  Luckily, Security Mouse was there to help us all.

Just like at home, the floats were interspersed with local high school bands and whatnot.  There were some terrific smaller papier-mache works of art, that were meant to be worn on a large shoulder harness and walked through the parade route.  I kept wondering how heavy these things must be and if people ran into things a lot. I mean, look at that eye slit!

The floats just kept coming, most of them truly inspired.  Here's a crazy flying devil zebra surrounded by figures straight out of Munch's head.

And here's a guy in the guise of Emperor, giving a victory salute.  (I think this might be Marcello Pera, member of the Legislature from Berlusconi's Forza Italia party and former Socialist politican.)  (AND Another update!  I've just displayed my ignorance of Marcello Lippi, the coach who led the Azzurri to a World Cup Championship last year.  Duh.  And he was born in Viareggio, too!)

There was also an American Graffiti float, surreally accompanied by a bevy of Elvii.

The American Graffiti float was anchored by a giant dancing Elvis, with Betty Boop and Felix the Cat playing second and third fiddle.  Here's Darren's picture of the float.  Felix's open mouth was apparently too much of an invitation for some people...

One of the last floats we saw prior to leaving was this number, perhaps the biggest we saw all day.  It towered over all of us, blotting out the sun with its deep black sides.  For serious.  It was a semi, being driven by... well, I don't know, but gawd was it big!  Look at the people standing on top of it!

The back of the float was a huge hole, taken up by enormous articulated skeletons.  People wearing harnesses and wings played at harassing the giant glowing bones.  Very impressive.

Since it was getting close to our scheduled train, we returned to the front to admire the Lamborghini tractors on display (I had no idea Lamborghini made tractors!  Some Midwesterner I am).  The rest of the group gathered, and we made our way to the train station.

Shockingly, at the train station there was a significant lack of information.  Five minutes before our train was scheduled to leave, it was finally assigned a track, and we made our way there to find... THIS.  You really want to follow that link.

As Darren says, the train that pulled up on our track at the assigned time for our train was - not our train!  It was a sleeper train, heading to Rome.  But it took half our group getting on the train and much pushing and shoving before this was discovered.

We all managed to get off the train and over to our actual train, which had of course been sent to a different track.  After another insane pileup at the doors, we actually managed to find seats - though I had to sit on Husbear.  Poor guy.  Apparently, some people weren't so lucky....

So, we had an amazing time at Carnevale.  A completely different experience than the one Mardi Gras I've been to!  I would highly recommend it, though you may want to make your 2008 hotel reservations, oh, last month.

girlie

Comments

[amanda]

wow! i think it's official... carnevale floats in italy are WAY cooler than the mardi gras floats in louisiana! speaking as someone who lived in louisiana for 8 years. how awesome that must have been!

[girlie]

Thanks, Amanda! It was really quite something. Husbear's mom sent pics from New Orleans this year, and it was pretty interesting comparing the two. Glad you liked the pictures!

[Pat Sinatra]

Looks like you folks were in Viareggio at the same time we were. What a marvelous time. The many floats with political statements were impressive. (Bravo, you Italians!) But we missed one or two of them as they went around the circuit before we arrived. I have been to many Italian street festivals in New York and New Jersey, but I'd never been to one in Italy! The Porchette stands with the huge rolls of cooked pork were amazing. Toblerone carts and anisette wafers smelled delicious. No one threw beads from the floats as they do in New Orleans, however, someone was throwing hard candies at me! (The next carnevale celebration should be Rio de Janiero.)

Very nice photos, you certainly captured the day and saw things with a different eye than I did! Thanks for sharing them.

[girlie]

Pat, thanks so much for the comment and your observations! It was certainly a striking celebration, and we were thrilled to have had the opportunity to go.

[tiffany jackson]

what a strange coincidence that we've all had run-ins with lamborghini's farm equipment lately. i went to a wine tasting highlighting the grape juice, livestock and veggies of italy's umbria region. although it was all in japanese and i was nearly sloshed, i managed to gather that the family had retrofitted the farm equipment production line to produce snazzy cars after mr. lamborghini became disenchanted w/ the clutch in his ferrari. there was also some oooohhhing over the length of his estate's driveway which the chef said was [don't quote me on this] 15 miles long. i may not remember so much about the estate, but the wine, a trescone, was my fave of the evening.

[girlie]

Tiffany-chan, that is strange! I had no idea before this day that lamborghini had anything to do with tractors.

Made me think of that awful country song... "she thinks my tractor's sexy".

And I'm really glad you got to experience a little of Umbria. Yum.