Mid-September, for Lack of a Better Title

Last weekend I went back to Banská Bystrica for the festival. It was a bit warmer than it was last year, but I feel that there was more there this year. As you can see, most of the day was quite nice (we did get a little rained on at the end, but not enough to spoil the day).

For some reason that I cannot at all fathom, the theme of this year's festival seems to have been Christopher Columbus. The three staging areas were therefore called the Niña, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria. Furthermore, there was a small pirate ship on wheels that was occasionally pulled through the festival, with pirates shouting things. I was not aware that Slovaks were notorious pirates.

There was the usual folk dancing on the main stage at the top of the square, but this year we got to see some Polish kids dancing in addition to the Slovak groups. We also saw the end of the children's dance groups, where all of the groups were re-introduced. There was also a group from Serbia and one from Finland that we'd missed seeing. It was quite multicultural.

At the top of the square, by the big church (the one in the first picture of this post), a medieval/Renaissance/olde tyme area was set up. One poor man was squaring off trees to make big beams for building; another was smithing, and other people were loitering about their camp area. We were checking out some vendors when we heard someone banging on a drum and yelling, so we went over to see what was happening. To my surprise, there was a group of teenagers with different birds of prey. They gave a short falconry demonstration, mostly by having a bird fly from one person to another. A few times, the receiving falconer would move into the crowd so that the bird would fly right over people's heads.

One of the really cool things about the festival this year was a photographer we stumbled upon. As we meandered through the booths of crafts and food products we came across one with framed photographs. All of them were in deep, saturated sepia tones, and the subjects, mostly from the Orava region, were very affecting. I had two big favorites. One, which I bought, is of a horse grazing by the side of the road, with a tree off to one side and the sun bright but hazy in the background. The other was of a solitary woman walking, with the horizon and hills behind her. It doesn't sound like anything special, but there's just something about this figure alone with all of the power of the Slovak landscape behind her that resonated in me. We pored over the photographs to decide which ones to buy, and tried to communicate to the photographer, Jaro Sýkora, how much we admired his work. Finding those photographs was something that we really appreciated. Mr. Sýkora's website is here, although the selection and quality is very poor compared to what we saw.

Here's a few pictures of Tisovec in late summer, lookin' good as usual. And absolutely no bears in the woods, also as per usual.