Your Town/City Traditions/Customs

[richbarna]

The town where I live has "festa major" or Town Party every year that lasts approximately 1 week.

The traditional activities revolve around story of a pirate "Omar", who invaded the town and took a local girl "Esther" as his prisoner, which lead to the town fighting off the nasty pirates and rescuing her.

This results in the re-enactment of various parts of the story, with the whole town dressed up as locals or pirates. There is traditional food, a huge party on the beach with live music, a re-enactment of the pirates arriving and a huge firework display. Everybody is armed with water pistols and the whole town is just one huge water fight for one week, (people even throw buckets of water at you from their balconies !!).

The week culminates with a huge flour and water fight which represents the final battle between the townspeople and the pirates.

It's great fun, and I was wondering what traditions your town or city has.

Here are some photos of me "defending" our town :)

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[KiwiNZ]

Now that looks like a whole bunch of fun

[cstudent]

A couple of things that go on in my hometown are TOSRV

http://www.tosrv.org/06/info.htm

It stands for Tour of the Scioto River Valley. It's an annual bike riding event where hundreds of bike riders come down from Columbus, Ohio (about 100 miles north) on Saturday. Host families put them up for the night and there are bands and lots of food and partying. Then they all ride back to Columbus on Sunday hung over. It almost always rains that weekend.

Another thing we have is River Days.

http://www.riverdays.org/

We have a parade and a lot bands, food and rides by the Ohio River. Kansas played here a couple of years ago. America was here. A lot of them are older acts from the 70's and 80's, but that's my kind of music anyway, so I love it. We use to have professional class hydro plane races, but unfortunately in the late 80's our town leaders got greedy and tried to charge admission to everything. The crowds went down and so the boat racers moved to another place. We've never been able to get them back. Shame too, 'cause it was a lot of fun to watch.

[Iandefor]

The only one that comes to mind for Bellingham is the Ski to Sea race (http://www.bellingham.com/skitosea/).

[djsroknrol]

Every October we have London Bridge days to celebrate the anniversary of the rededication of the London Bridge in Arizona...

[woedend]

uh...
we have thunder over louisville...which at some point was the largest fireworks show in the world...it may still be. Then, of course, we have the Kentucky Derby events, including hot air balloon race, pegasus parade, oaks(horse race...more family oriented)...and finally of course the actual kentucky derby.

[mips]

The town where I live has "festa major" or Town Party every year that lasts approximately 1 week.


That looks like a lot of fun. Would also like to do the 'Tomatina' Tomato Fight and running of the bulls.

http://www.spain-info.com/Culture/festivals.htm

[Lord Illidan]

Hehe...That's nothing for Malta.

Each village or small town has it's own religious village festa which comes annually to commemorate its patron saint.

Most festas come in August..the better as a distraction for the heat.
Anyway, fireworks galore :

http://www.maltavista.net/img/photo/images2/ntom_121.jpg

http://www.maltavista.net/img/photo/images/g_festa2.jpg

http://www.maltavista.net/img/photo/images/jks_30.jpg

[bonzodog]

where to start?

We have quite a lot of different events happen over the course of the year here in Galway, Ireland.

First big one I can think of is St Patricks Day - the events start the night before normally with a torchlit parade from the docks to the town hall. The Parade normally has a Guest pipe band from one of the many US PD's, and at the front is led by Celtic War Drums and pipes. A lot of the people flanking the parade, and carrying the flaming torches are dressed as devils and are supposed to represent the driving out of the snakes by St Patrick.

The second big event would be the Salthill Airshow. This is a terrific event, and last year we had the Red Arrows do a full acrobatic display. Although, the show also had a samll number of protesters, who said that UK War planes should have been banned as the UK was supporting the War in Iraq. Ireland has always held a neutral position in any conflict.

As I type, one of the years biggest events is taking place - The Galway Races. I live just 300yds from the race track, and there are 35,000 people in attendence at the track for the week long event. It's one of the big Events in the Irish National Calender, and is always attended by the Taoiseach (prime minister in english). The bookies can make millions here on race week, and the races are THE place to be seen.

[bensexson]

The main event that happens in Indianapolis, Indiana, USA is the Indy 500.

[slimdog360]

here in newcastle australia we have started a tradition of blocking out the sun with apartment buildings. We once had a beautiful harbour where anyone could go and sit back and watch the boats go by. Now its all apartment blocks which literaly block out the sun right around the area.

[Lord Illidan]

here in newcastle australia we have started a tradition of blocking out the sun with apartment buildings. We once had a beautiful harbour where anyone could go and sit back and watch the boats go by. Now its all apartment blocks which literaly block out the sun right around the area.

yeah that is happening everywhere.