PIEDMONT: my land of orange-throwers, good wine and no braggarts (blaghuer)

Maybe I’m starting to get a bit homesick and so this is an article about Turin -my home city- and the whole region wrapped around it!

Usually when you are working abroad or you are on vacation, you might find something that looks strange, unusual or even awkward about the place you are staying in. Therefore one might think that some Swedish custom can be considered a bit strange or even creepy.

Well, my job here is to demonstrate that everybody is weird in his/her own special way. And there’s nothing you can do about it!

Take my land for example: Piedmont, probably the least obvious Italian region. When you think of Italy usually you come up with ideas connected to the sea, the sun, good food (and probably something like this). Well, I’m not sure about crime but, apart from good food, we don’t have those.

We have mountains, hills, rain, snow, hail and…

 

 

Cars,

chocolate

…and wine!

We are so proud of the stereotypes other regions have developed against us …we even created “inside stereotypes” against different towns and places of our region!

Here is a short-list of what you can usually hear about Piedmontese:

1. We are bottled-up, unlikely to speak our minds and cold when it comes to feelings;
2. We live in a snowy-post-industrial-swamp inhabitated by communists;
3. We are tight-fisted when it comes to money;
4. We are polite to hide our mistrust towards others;
5. There’s no Piedmontese anymore because most of us are originally from the South of Italy (and that’s almost true, thank God!).

Wait a minute… this list reminds me of something I’ve heard about somewhere else! Actually the Swedish concept of Lagom reminds me a lot about our attitude towards life: “there is virtue in moderation”. If you brag all the time about yourself you will probably be called a blaghuer – someone who shows off, mostly without any reason to do it. 

…But don’t worry, things are getting weirder! And to demostrate it, let’s get to the point and talk about the Ivrea Carnival.

Ivrea is a nice little city located in the north of Piedmont where people have a peculiar way to celebrate Fat Tuesday and Carnival (Martedì Grasso e Carnevale).

 

…yes, they are throwing oranges and yes, they really hurt.

I know what you are thinking – don’t worry about wasted oranges: they actually use products that were rejected by shops. So this is a somehow sustainable festival (and that tells a lot about how much food we waste anyway).

As you can see the festival has kind of a medieval setting. It is based on the story of a girl (la mugnaia – the miller girl) who was forced to spend her first night as a bride with the bad guy: the lord of the city. People then rioted to defend her and also to get rid of the lord. So the orange throwers represent the people who are rioting (but they are also divided by quarters and “compete” against each other). While the soldiers on the carriages represent the lord’s guard (and they decide which quarter is the winner basing on… well, how bad they were hit during the fight). The fight lasts three days!

But:
1. The historical parade is mostly in 18th centuries costumes and everyone cheers up to the “General” who is a Napoleon-alike that guides an “army” dressed in costumes of different centuries;
2. If you don’t want to “actively participate” (i.e. to get targeted by orange-throwers) you have to wear a French red hat;
3. In the end it looks like everything was invented by some crazy bored guys who just wanted to have fun and cosplay in the first decades of the 20th centuries.

 

So it’s not that old. But that’s not the point: the point is how much they feel this tradition deep inside. And it is deeply rooted in the eporediese (the inhabitants of Ivrea) way of life.

And it’s really fun, I can assure you!

So everywhere you might be from, enjoy your awkward traditions and don’t judge the others’ ones …you might be weirder than you think.