Little Green Tracs

Viareggio Carnival

If you are looking for a bit of fun check out the Viareggio Carnival. The Carnevale di Viareggio or Viareggio Carnival, this year is celebrating 138 years of life and activity, a long-established European tradition of Carnival festivals, and one of the best-known events in Italy.

As a popular tourist event, it attracts every year more than one million spectators gathering to attend the magic of the Carnival.

 

For 2011, along with carnival celebrations throughout the city, there will be five carnival masked parades planned for February 20th, 27th and March 6th, 8th and 13th. The parades take place in a ring circuit, two kilometers long, on the seaside avenues of Viareggio, also known as La Passeggiata. The parades include folk bands and performers with some of the most original masks, offering excitement, culture and tradition in a program of entertainment and fun for children and adults.

Of special interest are the giant, symbolic papier-mâché floats - the biggest ones weighing about forty tones each  - built in the old methods and knowledge dating back to the ancient ‘trionfi’ (war-victory feastings) of the Renaissance, that adhere to the building techniques of the big sailing ships, a pride of Viareggio’s traditions.

These travelling theatres, the papier-mâché floats, are the product of the unequalled creativity, of the extraordinary sculpture and painting talent and skill of Viareggio ‘magicians’, an example of this popular art whose language has spread all over the world.

Viareggio is not far from the Via Francigena and easy to reach from cities like Lucca.

For more information please visit: http://www.viareggio.ilcarnevale.com/

Cammino di Marcella

In the evening on April 13 1997, a tragic car accident occurred along an A26 motorway tunnel near Roussillon, Italy.

Marcella only eight years old at the time, was thrown from the car and fell 28 meters from the viaduct to the valley below. As rescue workers struggled in the darkness to find Marcella, her mother and driver of the car, Anna Rastello, made a vow. If her daughter were found alive, Anna would walk to Lourdes. Soon after, rescue workers found Marcella alive, and immediately began treatment. Unfortunately, Marcella had suffered serious injuries leaving her confined to a wheel chair for the rest of her life.

Thus began the journey of acceptance of a disability of a child, a member of one’s family, while at the same time learning to understand the meaning of the “disability of objectivity” and the “subjectivity of disability.”

Now 14 years, on March 8 2011, on International Women's Day, Anna will fulfill her vow, and undertake this journey. She will start in Roussillon, the site of the accident, and walk to Lourdes, France to arrive May 4, 2011, 53 days later, a distance of approximately 1,300 kilometers.

Anna will travel the entire route on foot, to symbolize that, first the family, and then society must accept the disability of others, without creating additional barriers (mental, psychological, physical and architectural) thus forcing the bearer of a disability in endue a more serious burden of their handicap. The purpose of her walk is to bring attention to the continued struggles that people face while disabled.

To learn more, please visit: http://www.movimentolento.it/it/page/camminomarcella/

 

Robert Ward – The Via Francigena & An Italian Odyssey

Canadian author Robert Ward is a writer and traveler with a special interest in pilgrimages. He is the author of Virgin Trails (Key Porter, 2002), an agnostic’s guide to the history and worship of the Virgin Mary; and All the Good Pilgrims (Thomas Allen, 2007), a lighthearted account of his several walks on the Camino de Santiago pilgrim road.

He has walked the Camino several times and has his eye on Italy's Via Francigena and Japan's 88-Temple pilgrimage. He lives in Toronto with his wife Michiko, who loves to travel even more than he does.

Robert spent this past autumn in Italy, traveling sections of the Via Francigena. In his words, he did not have time at his disposal for walking, so he scouted instead, following the route as closely as he could by train and bus. He knew that would rob some suspense and surprises from the eventual foot journey. On the other hand, it meant he could gather bags and bags of research material - books, maps and brochures, not to mention a couple nice bottles of red wine - without worrying about his knees giving way beneath him.

He offers some insightful observations about the current state of the Via Francigena in Italy, as he compares it to the growth and popularity the Camino de Santiago in Spain.

He concludes with a candid review of our book An Italian Odyssey: One Couple’s Culinary & Cultural Pilgrimage.

Some of our own observations about the Via Francigena and Camino de Santiago are provided in the comments section of Robert's blog entry.

To read more please visit Robert’s blog at:
http://wardpilgrim.blogspot.com/2011/02/via-francigena.html