Zombie March:Boston, USA
For the third straight year, Bostonians dressed as zombies marched from Boston to Cambridge's Harvard Square in what organizers call a non-political, no-agenda good time.
Showing posts with label festivals. Show all posts
Showing posts with label festivals. Show all posts
Zombie March:Boston, USA
Rapa Das Bestas: Spain
Rapa Das Bestas: Spain
Since the Bronze Age, Galicians have been taming wild horses. On the first weekend of the month of July, hundreds of wild horses are rounded up by expert stockbreeders, known as agarradores, then trimmed and groomed.
Click here for more information
Ivana Kupala Night: Belarus
Ivana Kupala Night: Belarus
On the night of this pagan festival, celebrated on July 7, the Gregorian summer solstice, young women don wreathes and celebrants jump through fire and swim naked. The rites are connected to ancient beliefs about fertility and autopurification.
Click here for more information
The Summer Redneck Games: Georgia
The Summer Redneck Games: Georgia
L-bow, the official mascot of the Summer Redneck Games, poses next to the mud pit with the festival's ceremonial torch. Started in 1996 as a spoof of the summer Olympics held in Atlanta, the Games feature bobbing for pigs feet, hub cap hurling and the Redneck mud pit belly-flop contest
The Battle of the Oranges, Ivrea, Italy
The Battle of the Oranges, Ivrea, Italy
The origins of this festival are not well understood, particularly because oranges do not grow in the Alps of Italy, where the town is located. One legend has it that the Battle commemorates a popular rebellion of the 13th century, when the local poor deemed the largess of their feudal lord as inadequate, and threw it back in his face.
Tapati Festival: Chile
A week-long festival begun in the 1970s in an effort to drum up more tourism, Tapati includes a triathlon in which native participates run around the lake of the Rano Raraku vulcano carrying a large bunch of bananas.
Click Here for more information
Hadaka Matsuri, The Naked Festival: Japan
Hadaka Matsuri, The Naked Festival: Japan
Hidden somewhere in the midst of all these men in loincloths is one fully naked man. Touching him is believed to bring good luck and happiness.
Click here for more information
The Monkey Buffet: Thailand
The Monkey Buffet: Thailand
Monkeys sit on a tourist's shoulders during the annual Monkey Buffet Festival at the Pra Prang Sam Yot temple in Lopburi province, 150km (94 miles) north of Bangkok, November 26, 2006. More than 2,000kg of fruits and vegetables were used during the festival to promote tourism
Click here for more information
Festival of Falconry: England
Festival of Falconry: England
Bird-of-prey handlers from Turkmenistan hold falcons at the first Festival of Falconry. Bird keepers from all over the world attended the event to highlight the popularity and importance of the sport worldwide.
Click here for more information
The Chap & Hendrick's Olympics: England
The Chap & Hendrick's Olympics: England
A series of tongue-in-cheek competitions for traditional gentlemen who are against the vulgarity of modern culture, this festival includes events such as mixing dry martinis, the three-trousered limbo and a pipe relay.
La Tomatina, Bunol, Spain
La Tomatina, Bunol, Spain:
Every year the 9000 inhabitants of the tiny village of Bunyol find their population has quadrupled overnight as a multitude of enthusiasts turn up for the largest tomato fight on the planet. It's the opportunity of a lifetime - let battle commence!
By 11am the 30,000-strong army are well breakfasted on pancetta, chorizo and lots of rosé and have been prepared for action by copious soakings. Five bulbous, tomato-packed rockets are sent whistling into the skies and the masses launch into a frenzy of flinging, slinging and lobbing - it's every man and woman for themselves.
There are very few rules in La Tomatina - it is compulsory to squish your tomato before sending it into the red blur of the crowd before you, and other projectiles are not allowed. Don't worry about running out of ammunition because there's a monumental 125,000 kilo arsenal of ripe fruit. Participants have two hours in which to hurl them at what will be, for that brief time, thousands of enemies.
The aftermath of La Tomatina puts any blood-injected, horror-film set to shame. Don't count on recognising your mates, or them recognising you for that matter. Within hours, though, the town is transformed back to its former self. Shopkeepers take down their tarpaulins and everyone chips in to hose down the town and return it to its former "tomato-less" glory.
So how on earth did this gastronomically obscure tradition start? There is no patron saint of tomatoes or miraculous explanation of a tomato ritual, whereby locals beseech the gods for good weather and fortune for next year's harvest. It so happens the tradition was born way back in 1945 when some locals got carried away in a restaurant food fight. It must be the sheer fun of it that led to the "small-time" altercation taking on such epic proportions. The original disruptive diners must be very proud.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
