Kurentovanje

Friday, we hopped on a train to Ptuj to catch the opening of Carnival, or Kurentovanje.  Carnival is a huge celebration in Slovenia, and in Ptuj in particular.  Apparently, the main celebration is this upcoming weekend, with masquerades on Saturday and the Carnival parade on Sunday, and about 50,000 visitors show up for it (Ptuj is a town of about 20,000).

For our speed, this past weekend was perfect.  There was a big parade on Saturday, but our impression was that the only out-of-towners were people that showed up to be in the parade.  So, we got to stand right on the curb as the parade went by.  And it was phenomenal...one of those experiences that you know you'll be talking about for years to come.

The parade started with a horse and buggy leading some orchestra groups...then came groups of men dressed as though they were being carried in baskets on the backs of women...then came the "big-head bands"...then came the men with whips...and then came the Kurents...group after group after group after group of Kurents...and finally the gypsies.  We heard that there were 600-800 people in the parade, but it wouldn't surprise us if there were twice that many.

The best part was that everyone in the parade was having a ball running down the street, interacting with the crowd, getting drinks and smokes from bystanders along the way (it was all in good fun, but it wasn't exactly G-rated: see the guy flipping our camera the bird).  A lot of them came over to shake the kiddos' hands, and one woman even picked each of them up for pictures.  Even after the parade was over, it continued informally, and there were still people in costume roaming the streets hours later.

The maitre'd at our hotel gave us some of the scoop on Kurentovanje.  The festival is meant to usher out winter and usher in spring.  The Kurents wear cow bells around their waist to scare off evil spirits and they wear feathers or horns on their heads to bless chickens and cows with fertility.  There's also a fertility bear that "blesses" women with fertility (our maitre'd said his wife got pregnant shortly after being "blessed")...we didn't see the bear, thank goodness.  Also, according to our maitre'd, there are only two people left in the villages around Ptuj who still make the costumes.

Our only regret was that we forgot the video camera, because the noise was unbelievable.  Between the Kurents' bells and the whips you couldn't hear anything at times.  Here's a link to a You Tube video that might give you some idea of what the bells were like:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WAXu4R5OVpo

There were too many pictures to post, but you can look at the rest of them here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/53907857@N06/sets/72157626029220085/