Europe Events
Live Your Life Newsletter - June 2005
Travel & Hostel Newsletter for Backpackers
Newsletters: June 2005 | All Archives
Weird Events in Europe thisJune
World Barbeque Championships: 10-12 June - Interlaken. Bern, Switzerland
This joyful festival of the senses offers three days of continuous barbecuing at Interlaken's Kursaal Casino. Visitors can watch exciting competitions while wonderful meals and buffets offer a wide range of culinary delights.
Thirty teams from three continents meet to cross barbecue forks at the highest level. On Saturday and Sunday they also provide tips and tricks on how to cook the perfect al fresco meal. On Sunday, grills are fired up from 6am in the morning, enabling the competitors to present their specialities to an independent team of jurors at midday. In recent years several thousand visitors have attended the event.
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Procession of the Unmarried Women: 12 June - Palestrina. Roma, Rome
Husbandless women eager to tie the knot seek assistance at this annual devotional procession in Palestrina, held in honour of St Anthony of Padua.
Admittedly, the practice of segregating all single women in the village, dressing them in white robes and getting them to walk in line through the city praying to the patron of spinsters for a husband has been phased out somewhat lately. But the procession still takes place, on the evening of 12 June, the day before the feast day of the saint.
These days though the only participants clad in white are little girls who've had the Prima Communione (First Eucharist) in the preceding year. Who knows though, unlike St Christopher, St Anthony is still around and hasn't been de-canonised yet, so you never know. Careful what you pray for, you might just get it...
Palestrina is a cute, scenic little village, and despite its relatively limited size it is incredibly ancient, predating Rome's foundation by more than 700 years. Local cooking has thus had much time to evolve and among the local delicacies you might want to try are the giglietti biscuits, named after the Giglio, or lily, the flower of St Anthony.
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Kirkpinar Oiled Wrestling Festival: 24-30 June - Edirne, Turkey
The large stadium beside the town of Edirne on the Greek-Turkish border is the location for this annual summer wrestling festival, where over 1000 wrestlers come to participate in the week-long "sudden death"-style competition.
This event's somewhat kinky title belies the fact that it is a sport that is over five centuries old. Oil-coated wrestling or Yagli Gures was devised as a means of training troops, but it has since become a popular spectacle, with champions becoming national celebrities.
Wearing only a pair of leather trousers and a good slick of olive oil, competitors pair off and struggle to gain a grip on their opponent, before one is flipped over and pinned to the ground. The winner goes on to fight another winner, and so on, until there is only one wrestler left standing. The whole tournament can take days.
Combat aside, the festival also attracts gypsies from around the Middle East and Eastern Europe. A colourful fair springs up outside the arena, and visitors tired of cheering and booing fighters can come and lose themselves in the sights and sounds of the Bohemian way of life.
Edirne is also the location for the Ottoman architect Mimar Sinan's greatest building. Found in the heart of the 15th-century commercial centre, the Selimiye Mosque was built between 1569 and 1575 and boasts minarets spiralling to 230ft and a central cupola more than 100ft across. Iznik tiles placed in intricate geometric patterns and chiselled marble latticework decorate the walls of the mosque to mesmerising effect, and Sinan called it his most harmonious architectural achievement.
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Newsletters: June 2005 | All Archives
