Ivrea is a wonderful town that is only a short, one-hour train ride away from Turin. If you study abroad during the spring you will be—if you so choose to go (I hope you choose to go; you really ought to go)—privileged enough to attend the carnival in Ivrea, a carnival that dates to the 12th century, a carnival during which there is an orange fight, one of the largest food fights in the world, a fight in which groups of armored men in horse-drawn carriages brave the narrow streets of the town while being pelted by oranges. There were hundreds of thousands of oranges. There were thousands of citizens and visitors. So many oranges that the streets were covered thickly with spliced and splayed chunks and fragments. So many horses that all of the orange shrapnel was held together by the light-brown paste of horse droppings. It was quite an interesting mixture, and quite an interesting town.
If you are not so fortunate to go to Ivrea for the orange festival, it is still a city worth seeing. It is very old, there are some very wonderful streets—narrow and winding and rising up with graded inclines on small hills, cobble-stoned and shop-lined—and there is the river running through the city is well. You walk across a nice bridge and down below the river runs. It’s a good place to go even for an afternoon trip, maybe for dinner, and then come back. Sometimes you have to leave Turin and return to realize how much you loved her truly. This happened so many times to me. it was always exciting to leave. To see another place. To be in another city, another region, by the mountains or by the sea, to be in another country sometimes, but—always—when the train started clicking to a stop at Turin, I became very excited. Very happy. Very satisfied.
Filled with the knowledge that I had chosen the best city for study in Italy.
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