July is festival season in Estonia. Two of the three festival only take place every four years, namely the National dancing and the Singing festival, the third is week long beer festival that fortunately comes around every year.
On Thursday I went to the Dancing festival, which as you can probably guess involved groups of dancers from around the country dress in traditional costumes from yesteryear. What was suprising was the numbers involved, over seven and half thousand people lines up in formations that wouldn’t have been out of place in a Napoleonic army. For over two hours the performed numerous routines, with the theme of this years festival was the sea. At times it was mesmerizing and so much more than I had expected.
The crowd loved it and that was what I was expecting to have happened last night at the Singing festival. However this display was far from mesmerizing, but rather boring, ineptly organised and completely void of atmosphere. The show was an hour and a half late, finishing around midnight, instead of singing songs that were familiar to each Estonian and creating a feeling of nationalism and unity, they were lengthy gaps between songs, pointless poems and songs that nobody knew.
In fact it was so bad both Tiiu and I placed comments on newspapers website like so many others. As your Estonian probably is a little worse than mine I have just included my rant.
....... Having moved from Ireland to Tallinn in January, I've been looking forward to this festival season. I went to the dancing festival and was mesmerized. I didn't understand everything but I still felt the passion of the crowd and really enjoyed it.
But what the hell was last night about????
When I bought my ticket at 6:00 I was told that there were still 9,000 places left.
I don't think so!
The place was packed. I couldn't even see the green of the grass.
Off course by the time the second song started there was plenty of space as people were leaving all the time. From the top of the hill I could see a new parade, but this time it was of people leaving.
I stayed until 10:30, waiting for the show to get better, if there really was a god I would have been praying for things to get better. I've seen highlights of previous years festivals where the audience were singing along with the choirs and everybody felt proud to be an Estonian.
I'm a foreigner and even I could tell that was a disaster.
So many other people have complained about the unforgivable delays, the endless and pointless poetry and the pathetic organisation by the monkeys that put this show together, but bloody hell even drunk monkeys could have organized things better.
Fortunately there Beer Festival is coming up and all will be fine with the world once again.
On Thursday I went to the Dancing festival, which as you can probably guess involved groups of dancers from around the country dress in traditional costumes from yesteryear. What was suprising was the numbers involved, over seven and half thousand people lines up in formations that wouldn’t have been out of place in a Napoleonic army. For over two hours the performed numerous routines, with the theme of this years festival was the sea. At times it was mesmerizing and so much more than I had expected.
The crowd loved it and that was what I was expecting to have happened last night at the Singing festival. However this display was far from mesmerizing, but rather boring, ineptly organised and completely void of atmosphere. The show was an hour and a half late, finishing around midnight, instead of singing songs that were familiar to each Estonian and creating a feeling of nationalism and unity, they were lengthy gaps between songs, pointless poems and songs that nobody knew.
In fact it was so bad both Tiiu and I placed comments on newspapers website like so many others. As your Estonian probably is a little worse than mine I have just included my rant.
....... Having moved from Ireland to Tallinn in January, I've been looking forward to this festival season. I went to the dancing festival and was mesmerized. I didn't understand everything but I still felt the passion of the crowd and really enjoyed it.
But what the hell was last night about????
When I bought my ticket at 6:00 I was told that there were still 9,000 places left.
I don't think so!
The place was packed. I couldn't even see the green of the grass.
Off course by the time the second song started there was plenty of space as people were leaving all the time. From the top of the hill I could see a new parade, but this time it was of people leaving.
I stayed until 10:30, waiting for the show to get better, if there really was a god I would have been praying for things to get better. I've seen highlights of previous years festivals where the audience were singing along with the choirs and everybody felt proud to be an Estonian.
I'm a foreigner and even I could tell that was a disaster.
So many other people have complained about the unforgivable delays, the endless and pointless poetry and the pathetic organisation by the monkeys that put this show together, but bloody hell even drunk monkeys could have organized things better.
Fortunately there Beer Festival is coming up and all will be fine with the world once again.
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