Last weekend and preweekend (06.21-06.24) was spent in alternative
midsummer celebration.
Weather was plus minus good, aside some rain on Thursday night and
Friday evening. Company was also okay, but i liked Thursday evening more
because there were no drunk heads and loud music (festival started on Friday
evening). Music was very loud and playing till six in the morning and also
quite bad on Saturday night so almost no sleep made me very tired and grumpy. I
fail to understand why some people consider shouting, drinking to the ground
and not letting others to rest as 'fun'.
There we so much to do and only after coming back home and reading
program i realised how less i saw. There were one camp 'Forever christmas' with
hot wine, soup and gifts for people who said some rhymes to Santa claus. There
were camp of eco-crazed, joga obsessed people. Fest organizers
declared 'leave no trace' politics but there were some much trace left it was disgusting.
On saturday day we went to look for Šventoji river.
Description said 'twenty minutes, two kilometers', but we got lost a bit, so it
took around one hour one way. There were no (pseudo) beach so people who wanted
to swim had to jump straight into river and go. I didn't have courage to do so
as river is very fast and i'm not very good swimmer yet.
The sculptures were very nice and took
quite long time to make them (i heard weeks) and lots of attention to details and
burning them was quite sad at times but it was the point of fest. On first (Friday)
night gates were burned down. It was made mostly by stew and planks. There were
some cable holding them together and we put some fabric around them so nobody
would get hurt, but one dog still did. That dog was a bit funny for me. It's
seven months old German shepherd name Tiklis and for me he seemed plain stupid.
He wanted to play but didn't give stick to throw. He hurt himself. He didn't
know how to swim (really!) - when jumping in the water he started whining and
instead of swimming to the shore he tried to get on small bridge so in the end
three guys had to get him out.
Buning statue looked as great as before burning. There were some
drummers, fakirs, dancers, singers and fires going on. Before that i persuaded
other to make flower crowns as it is one of traditions of Midsummer to later throw
them into water or burn. I slept in my car that night as i really wanted to get
some rest and woke up with sun hitting my eyes, stiff knees and wanting to take
almost all clothes, what i did. But at least i rested. Music was horrible on
sunday night but most of people didn't care about it. So, all in all,
weekend was very good.
