Battle of the Oranges Italy

“I stuff my red hat in my pocket, follow Silvia towards the approaching cart. All I can hear is the whomp of oranges crashing. I start throwing. At first I am careful, but the melee is such that I just get caught, I am hit in the head, chest, neck and stomach, but I don’t feel any pain. I feel light. It’s liberating. The atmosphere is charged; the masked characters become my frustrations, the people that made me angry during the years.”

“A roar went up as I took my first hit. It smacked into my left eye with a thud, dislodging a contact lens. “Ehi!” my hosts cheered, “baptism by orange!” It was only the first of three afternoons of frenzied fruit-based carnage known as the Battle of the Oranges, and already I was half blind.”

“All I can see is a flash of orange, then I am hit in the chest. It knocks my breath away. I slide backwards, fall bum-first in a pile of orange mush. What the heck? I touch my head: my red hat is still there. [...] An hour into the battle, the square is covered in a thick sludge, mixture of orange pulp and horse manure. It smells sharp, sweet-and-sour.”