Kurentovanje - part 1

On 18 Feb we went to our first Carnival celebration here. It was NOT disappointing! It seems to be a mixture of the typical Carnival pre-lenten hullabaloo mixed with a healthy dose of pagan celebrating designed to scare off winter. And anything that’s designed to scare off winter is a helluva good thing, of course. Well, now that you mention it, you’re correct in a meteorological sense when you say that we haven’t exactly HAD a winter this year, but let’s not split hairs. After standing parade-side for three-plus hours in 30-something degrees, our extremities were well-frozen and that’s close enough to winter for me (laugh away, cold-weather friends – our blood is thin again and you are clearly envious).

We arrived a bit too early for the parade, thanks to our largely ineffective translation of the festival event schedule, but at least this meant we got a very good parking spot. We also had a chance to tour the castle. The castle was well done, although not depicted as being as old as it actually is -- construction began in the early 1100’s but most of the rooms were represented as they would have been decorated during the seventeenth century. Besides the furnishings, also worth mentioning are the large ceramic stoves in every room. You can still see many of these stoves in homes today, usually covered with flat or very simply decorated ceramic tiles, but the tiles in the castle, and the stoves themselves, boasted very ornate decorations and were designed to complement the rooms.

The plaster carvings on the ceilings were fantastic and in great condition. There were loads of paintings, and although they weren’t done by any world-renown artists (unless you count the somewhat prolific ‘painter unknown’, who received most of the credit) they gave a visitor a wonderful idea of what people were wearing at the time, or at least what they thought was fashionable. In one building there were even pictures depicting people in their Carnival costumes; worth mentioning is the surprising fact that the native American costume enjoyed as much popularity back in the 1700s as it did at this year’s parties.

The tapestries were also well done, and given the chill of the day, a person could gain a real appreciation for such cozy wallpaper. Since it was an active residence fairly recently, the tapestries gave way to painted canvases and printed linen wall coverings in the other rooms. There was a lot of Asian influence in several of the rooms. In the room exhibiting the serving plates et al there were several very nice Chinese serving pieces, and even an impossibly small silk slipper. Yes, it WAS a strange juxtaposition next to the dinner plates, but even imagining a foot that small (4 inches at most) is strange enough, so why not?

I’ve posted some pictures from the museum, so you can check those out HEREwhile I find a bit of free time to work on my post about the parade and upload those pictures as well.

Take care ~S