Sunday, August 31, 2008

Party on...

The latest from the festival circuit....

From Spain (h/t The Wife):


'If you've ever lived within earshot of a newborn child, it's no stretch to imagine they can have something devilish inside. The inhabitants of the northern Spanish town of Castrillo de Murcia have developed an ingenious technique for exorcising seemingly innocent children. Just spread them on mattresses in the middle of the street, and have a bunch of demons leap over them.'
From Italy:

'Orange fetishists are well advised to visit the northern Italian town of Ivrea, 35 kilometers from Turin, on the Sunday before Lent when the townsfolk stage their annual Battle of the Oranges, the country's largest fruit fight.'

It involves around 3,000 revellers on foot and in carts drawn by decorated horses and lasts for three days, after which everyone is covered in pulp and orange juice, and the streets are slippery with squashed orange peel.'

From America:


'Wild rides, fireworks and letting it all hang out. That's the updated American dream at Burning Man 2008.

The annual desert gathering always celebrates that most-American ideal: freedom. Freedom to ride a giant red, white and blue tricycle across the playa; freedom to blow your mind however you want; freedom to traipse around wearing nothing but body paint.'

2 comments:

lily said...

Rough times for me down here.
Last friday and saturday drunk students traditionally ended their car race called "Undie 500"(buy a car under 500 dollars, get yourself a theme as the people down here apparently love the activity of dressing up, and drive as fast as you can to Dunedin)in the street where I am living.
On top of that, the same procedure as every year: they started to burn couches as well as their cars for whatever reason.
As a result,the police came and arrested some of them.
Here is the article from NZ Herald (where is the hyperlink??):
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/topic/story.cfm?c_id=329&objectid=10528717
Why can all these people bother? Are they bored? Or just bored with their everyday life?
Ok, cool, let's jump over babies, throw oranges at each other, or burn a couch, how does that sound?

Had midsemester break last week and went together with friends for a five day hike into the wild.
It was a changing and challenging expericence.
Being away from this crazy civilisation we live in showed and proved me a lot. The track went along some lonely beaches with crystal clear water and through rainforests. We didn't meet anyone in five day that was defining.
And I realized that life is just a series of fortunate and unfortunate events.

Enjoy German summer. Today is the beginning of spring down here.

JCWood said...

Hi lily. Yes, that sounds...not enjoyable at all. Nothing wrong, I think, with some revelry (even--or especially--raucous revelry).

But when you talk about destruction, as the man said, you can count me out.

At least in most cases. There are arguably times when a few things need to be broken.

But surely not on a nice spring day in Dunedin.

I read your post about your break from civilisation. Sounds lovely. Except for those blisters.

The German summer is a bit wet and grey at the moment. Though the weekend was nice.

Alles gute und Tschüß!