Carnivale and Caltagirone

Happy Carnivale!!!

I had an absolutely incredible weekend seeing Carnivale in Acireale (and the ceramics in Caltagirone). I apologize in advance for the length of this blog as I feel it will be quite long today, but there is so much to retell. I've decided to actually go in reverse chronological order as the most exciting stuff happened yesterday. If I explain it chronologically, I'm afraid you won't make it to the end. Anyways, here goes:

On Sunday, Clay and I headed to Acireale, a nearby town, to celebrate Carnivale. Carnivale actually has its roots in religion. It began throughout Europe (and Brazil) as a huge festival to indulge yourself before Ash Wednesday, since during Lent, people fast and aren't supposed to have parties. Some places actually begin Carnivale celebrations in Novemeber, and as the Tuesday approaches, the celebrations get more intense. It's a bit like Mardi Gras in the states, although I have a feeling this might be a bit bigger (I've never been to Mardi Gras, so I can't really compare the two very well).


During the past few weeks in Taormina, we have seen some evidence of Carnivale as many children have dressed up each night and thrown confetti on each other. It always looked really fun, but we had no idea what a real Carnivale celebration was like until Sunday.

We arrived in Acireale by bus around 11 a.m. By the time we got there, the party was already in full swing. There were street vendors selling confetti, silly string, Carnivale hats, food and sweets. The town was supposedly closed off to cars, but there always seemed to be a few trying to get through the crowds. We spent the morning walking around, and on one of the piazzas, we found the parking spot for about half the floats. The floats we saw then were made of flowers and were incredibly pretty and intricate. The other floats were what they call "allegorically-grotesque" characters. They are made out of paper-mache apparently (but they didn't look or feel like paper mache). They also move, which is really cool, and I'm not talking about a little hand wave; on one of the floats, this clown would do flips.

We also saw these Native American musicians on the street. It was really bizarre, and we've decided that Sicilia (or maybe Italy or all of Europe) has a weird fascination with Native Americans. We definitely saw a few Indian Chief costumes. Anyways, we weren't impressed with these Native Americans (they usually had a soundtrack to back them up, so it wasn't even authentic music, but I guess these spectators didn't realize that).

As the day went on, more and more people came, so that by the end of the day, there had to be at least a million people in this city. We could barely move by the evening time. And there was about a half-inch layer of confetti in the streets - just like snow really. The silly string and confetti were a lot of fun. Basically, people just walk around spraying each other with silly string and throwing confetti on people. We noticed that for a lot of younger guys, it appears to be a form of flirting. Groups of guys would look for girls and then attack them with silly string and confetti. Clay finally caved and bought some silly string so we could defend ourselves! In actuality, this allowed us to attack first, which resulted in plenty of retaliation with loads of silly string and confetti. By the end of the day, I was covered in it, and when I got home, I found confetti all over me and my clothes. I had confetti thrown in my ears, and even my mouth when I had it wide open, lauging at one point. People really enjoyed throwing confetti on me when I was trying to take a picture (thankfully this stuff isn't dangerous to the camera, otherwise I would've been so nervous all day).

All the children and many of the adults were dressed in costumes. Snow White was easily the most popular girl costume. I saw about 1,000 (that's not an exaggeration) Snow Whites. Most of the boys were some sort of superhero - Spiderman, Batman, Ninja Turtle, etc. I tried to get some pictures of some of the kids in costume, but I didn't want to look like a creepo photographing random children, so I didn't get too many. Many of the adults dressed up as well, although a lot adults and teenagers would just wear one of the silly hats. Most people in fact had a hat, and after awhile, I couldn't resist, so I bought a Carnivale hat. It is actually my first souvenir purchase, and it was well worth it. With the hat on, I think I looked more fun, so more confetti and silly string were tossed my way!

According to the program we had, the "parade" was supposed to begin at 3:30 p.m. We quickly realized their definition of parade and ours is very different. We had staked out a spot along the parade route about an hour earlier, but we eventually got bored people watching (although the costumes were fun to see), and we decided to walk toward the main piazza where the parade was set to begin to see what was going on. Apparently by parade, they mean the floats just drive around in circles, but it's not actually organized (which should be no surprise and things rarely seem organized here). There were no barriers to block off the route, and people were in the streets, walking next to the floats, in front of them, behind them, etc. They would even climb on the floats. We thought it was very interesting as that would never be allowed in the states because of safety and liability concerns (we actually had to explain a few days ago to some of our friends here how much litigation occurs in the states, and how everything is now a liability concern). From what I could tell the only safety precaution was a megaphone through which someone might occasionally yell "Attenzione!" (Be careful). Other than that, everyone just had fun walking with the floats.

The floats must have circled several times because we kept seeing them the rest of the evening as we walked around the city. There were also a few bands, which were really entertaining. They also seemed to have no organization. They had uniforms and some of them played weird looking instruments (for instance, the cymbals were attached to the end of these cardboard scissors, so the cymbol player would scissor in order to crash the cymbals). When they finished a song, they would start talking to each other to figure out their next song. Then they would flip through their music and someone would count off and they'd start. It was really entertaining.

Since the parade wasn't actually a parade, you couldn't hear the band coming, so each float had a sound system to play music. I don't know why we're still surprised when we hear American music, but I think we about died of laughter when suddenly we heard "Young man, there's no need to feel down. I said, young man . . ." Yes folks, they are quite familar with the Village People and the YMCA (although I'm quite certain they don't actually have YMCAs over here). Apparently, YMCA is a very popular song as we heard it about 3 different times. When the chorus came the first time, we looked around, and sure enough, the hand motions came. I honestly thought I would fall on the ground with laughter. Never in a million years did I expect to be singing along to YMCA in Sicily at the largest party I've ever attended. Upon closer inspection, though, we realized they actually don't know the hand motions - they just move their hands from side to side, instead of forming the shapes. I guess they didn't pay close enough attention to the music video. But it was still fun. Clay took a video of it, and we're going to try and put it on dropshots so everyone back home can enjoy the Italian version of the YMCA!

We had a bit of "fun" getting home as well (of course, that's nothing new anymore). We had decided to take the train back as the last bus left around 4 p.m., and we wouldn't get to see as much. So, we headed to the train station around 6:15 p.m. to catch a 7:30 p.m. train. We had been told by our front office that the train station was about a 10 or 15 minute walk from town, which was a load of bull if I've ever heard it. Anyways, we start walking out of town, following our map and signs. We were walking with a huge wave of people that we assumed we leaving as well, so we kept following them. They climbed an overpass and crossed over the tracks, and then they all swarmed onto these buses. We kept walking (along with a few people) in the direction of the station. About 15 minutes later, we decided that we had made a mistake somewhere. We pulled out the map and realized that while we were in the right direction, we were on the wrong side of the tracks (both literally and figuratively at this point). If we had trusted our instincts, we would've stayed on the right road and never crossed the tracks. But we thought for sure, all these people were headed in the same direction as us. So we headed back to the overpass, and when we got there, I stopped and asked a police officer for directions, and he confirmed were the station was for us. At this point, it's about 7:10 p.m. and we realize we're in danger of missing the train (it wasn't a huge deal as there were two more, but they didn't leave until 10 p.m.). So we started really booking it at point and we arrived at the train station at about 7:25 p.m. We bought the ticket, but it's a small station, and there were no electronic signs to indicate which platform the train would be at. We made a gamble here and went to the middle platform where everyone was standing (we were a bit wary of following the crowd after the last experience). We got to the middle platform and then realized that we hadn't validated our tickets. Basically, whenever you purchase a ticket you must have it stamped to indicate when you bought it because it's actually good for another 30 days or something. So we run back down the steps into the station to try and validate it, only to see no mechanism to validate it on the machine. We ran back to the platform and just hoped for the best. The train arrived, and we weren't even entirely sure it was ours, but I asked a guy where the train was going and he said Messina, which is the right direction, so we got on. This train was different and had compartments, and there was a mad rush of people to get into the compartments. They seemed to fill up quickly, plus, people would put their stuff on seats to make it look taken so no one would sit with them. We finally found one and sat down (unfortunately I couldn't remember the right way to ask them if we could sit there until 10 seconds after we sat down). We got off the train without incident and then walked up the steps to Taormina (I hated that walk/climb just as much as the last time).

Needless to say, I slept incredibly well last night, with dreams of Carnivale!!

For those of you who want to keep reading, I'll now detail our trip to Caltagirone on Saturday. I'm sad to report it's not nearly as interesting, but it was worth the trip.

We left Saturday morning with the school - there were 6 of us plus Pepe who drove us in an 8-passenger van, which of course nervewracking as usual. The drive to Caltagirone took a little less than two hours, but it was an incredibly pretty drive. We've only seen mountainous areas so far, but this drive had more farmlands, plains and hills, so it was a pleasant change of scenery.

Caltagirone is famous for its ceramics. From what I understood of the tour (which Pepe gave in Italian), the clay needed to produce the ceramics is found near Caltagirone, which is why they do the ceramics there. They even have a school there for the children to learn the trade. I think my favorite part was the steps. There are (I believe) 170 steps in this one part of town, and on the front of each step are ceramic tiles, many of which depict a scene a story. I took lots of pictures of the intersting ones. During Christmas, they place luminaries on these steps and make pictures depicting the birth of Christ. The pictures of that looked pretty incredible.

We climbed the steps, and along the steps are ceramic shops. We went into several of them, and Pepe had some of the owners explain the process for making ceramics. The owners didn't talk as slow as Pepe, so I unfortunately can't really explain to you the process. I do know in one shop, the ceramics were making noises, like "ding," which I believe the owner said was because they were still settling (I could be way wrong, actually. When I hear sentences in Italian, I find the key words then build the most logical sentence out of it, so I never really know if I'm making up the right sentence or not).

We also went in the city's public garden and saw a gazebo with ceramics on it. We then went into the ceramic museum, which wasn't as interesting as the rest of the city, but I guess it was good to see some of the original ceramics from the city.

That's really it for Caltagirone. A few other things from the weekend:

On Friday night, I saw fireworks during dinner from the house. It was a huge show, and it lasted about 20 minutes. Aurelio explained that they were for a wedding, and based on the size and length of the show, this person clearly had a lot of money. He estimated the show cost at least 5,000 euro. On Friday afternoon, we said goodbye to Romy, Thomas, Trevor and Tina. They will be missed, and we hope the new people coming in will be just as nice and enjoyable. I also unfortunately had to say goodbye to Alicia Saturday morning. With Alicia gone, I now live on the second floor by myself, which I suppose might be nice for awhile. I believe we have two new people coming next week. We actually have a new student in the downstairs apartment who arrived Saturday, but I haven't met him yet. Now that Alicia and Christoff are gone, Clay and I have been at the school longer than anyone. I'm not quite sure how I feel about that - I really do hate saying bye so often to our new friends.

Anyways, there won't be an update tomorrow. We plan to go to Catania for the Festival of St. Agata, the patron saint of Catania. This is apparently a huge festival, and it actually began yesterday. We're only going to get to see part of it since many of the activities happen late at night and early in the morning. It's also more of a religious thing I believe. But once I know what it is, I will update you on Wednesday.