Festival of Folk Arts

There has been a Festival of Folk Arts going on here in Budapest for the last few days. The festival ends today, August 20th, the birthday of St. Stephen, the king who Christianized Hungary just after 1000AD. (His Hungarian name is Istvan I.) The festival is like the 4th of July, a state fair, the Rose Bowl parade and the most amazing craft show all put together. The banks and stores were closed, even the grocery stores.

They have lots of food, concerts, parades and children’s activities and probably a lot more that we didn’t understand. Today the entire center city area was closed to traffic and they were having airplane races down the Danube. They have giant buoys set in the river at different spots and the people line the entire river bank for several miles.



These planes swoop down and fly between the markers on the river, then go straight up and make a fantastic loop—a twist followed by a dive—and fly back to where they came from. It looked as if they were 15-20 feet from the water when they flew between the buoys. This took up most of Tuesday and Wednesday.



Each plane made their pass and was timed. The times were announced in Hungarian and English over some giant loudspeakers that were placed about every block. There were lots of planes and lots of people. Redbull was one of the major sponsors of the event. Maybe this would catch on in Grand Rapids? I wasn't quick enough with the camera, but you can see the jet trail between the buoys. The plane is behind the trees.



I'm getting so high tech, I don't know what to do with myself. When I was setting up the Flickr slideshow I found these photos of the same plane race taken today by someone else here in Budapest. They are so much better than I am shamelessly using them.




The main site for the folk art show was at the Castle which is high on a hill on the Buda side. We took a tram and a bus to get to the area thank goodness, since it was 86 and more humid than usual. It is so clear here that when it is warm it seems quite intense since there are no clouds. We stood in a long line to get on the bus to take us to Castle Hill. Our turn came on the 3rd bus. These buses are smaller to accommodate the tiny streets inside the castle walls.



Then when we got to the Castle area we had to stand in another long line to pay about $7.50 to get in.

Once we were in we saw the most amazing array of tents selling everything you could imagine—straw weaving, painted cookies, pottery, wood carving, baskets, straw hats, wool embroidered jackets, handmade lace, felted wool items, hand wrought iron, handmade shoes and leather items, embroidered table clothes, jewelry, hats, etc.



Then the food—jam, honey, pretzels, bread, pizza, elephant ears, ice cream, beer, wine, roasted sausage, potato pancakes, sauerkraut, slaw, roast pork, some sort of pastry that looked a lot like a cream curl! It was all unbelievable. The bad part was it was hot and very crowded. You were sort of carried along with the crowd. We took a lot of pictures of these tents, so I’m taking Cory's advice and adding a Flickr album, whatever that is. But you should see a link somewhere nearby to click on for more photos. Hope it works. The man sewing the large hat was a promotion for the hat stand that was nearby. He just kept adding more and more rounds to that huge hat. I wonder what he does with it after the fair?



One item we noticed which seems to be popular in many countries is a sort of ceramic bird. (One of our friends bought one when we were in Turkey in 2006.) If you have ever seen them you will know. They look a bit like a pipe and you put water in them and when you blow into the stem they whistle like a bird. A whole bunch of kids had them and the place sounded like a bird sanctuary. What a lot of fun they were having.



The parades were in one area of the central city and more tents with more food and exhibits were in the square in front of the parliment building. There they had entertainers on stilts and more music and kid's activities.



This all ended tonight with a fantastic fireworks display. The internet said it would last twenty minutes for the twentieth of August and it did. But the entire twenty minutes was like the finale of our fireworks in the US. They shot off fireworks constantly from four different spots on all sides. The internet also estimated that about one million people would be lining the river and watching. But the area is so spread out that our spot didn't seem all that crowded. Just at the end we decided to try to take some pictures. This one isn't the best, but I think you can get the idea. We walked home--about a mile. The streets were blocked from cars and it was a nice night. The people all seemed to really enjoy the day.