Week 30
Tuku, Finland

First some updates.  On May 19th I moved to Turku, but I haven’t been really here. My things have been. It is until last Sunday, 23.7.2017, were I “landed” in Turku, so adventures ahead….

While being in a new city, a habit I am building up is:  after work go to discover.
At the moment we are doing this discovering by biking, so far so good. :).
Btw, this habit should be well build up and permanent, it is amazing what one can find.

On Tuesday while returning back home, we hear someone testing a microphone on a street. It was loud for a Finnish context, this was a bit odd.  Also during this day we saw small stages and people dancing on them.

It was on  Wednesday,  after we saw a sign on a street about Europeade 2017 that we realized something was going on.  Then, I decided to stop at the tourist information office and I was informed about the Europeade 2017 schedule. We were just on time for the opening ceremony.

We biked to the main stage where the opening was programmed and surprise!  I saw the following regional dresses:

The official opening include over 300 dancers from Turku region, it was something special to watch. Here a small clip of it:

The event include individuals of ALL ages groups, and this is literal, from infants to grandpas.  All ages have a space in here.  As the commentator mentioned:

“More than 6000 dancers got together from 24 countries, and no matter their age, weight or wehre you come from. The most important thing is the spirit!”

Indeed one could feel a magical spirit. 🙂

Once the ceremony finalized, as you can imagine the dancing floor was open for EVERYBODY:

So what is Europeade?  Let me copy the following text from the Europeade’s website: We are committed to the preservation of our intangible heritage of regional folk culture, be it music, dance, song, or costume.  To reach this goal, we spend five days together sharing our dance and music with our friends and performing in the shows.

Next a summary of this rich experience!

— cais