Zvejnieksvētki

Every July on the second Saturday we celebrate Fishermen festival. Lots of activities, theatrical performances, regates, songs, dances and strange sport activities like boot throwing. Takes place at towns and villages near the sea.

Jāņi

Jāņi or Līgo svētki(Midsummer night festival) is one of the best Latvian festivals which is held in summer at night from 23rd to 24th of June. The rooms and houses are decorated with small green twigs and different herbs. Girls wear wreaths made from flowers while men wear wreaths made from the twigs of an oak-tree. The host and hostess have prepared a special Līgo refreshments for their guests - caraway-seed cheese, some beer and other things. In the last years people eat also fried meat(barbecue, shashlik) a tradition borrowed from Eastern countries. The main idea of this festival is to celebrate the light's victory over darkness as this is commonly considered the shortest night of the year(eventhough we know that actually the shortest night happens to take place some two nights earlier). So to help the sun to win the night people are supposed to make fires and stay awake all night till sunrise. People also sing songs and have other activities, like searching for fearn blossom. This fearn blossom traditionally people went to search in woods alone and the one who was lucky to find it had gained happiness for entire life. However, somewhere during their scarry, lonely walks in forests people met and as they were away from other people, they started doing completely different things. Therefore nowadays, "seeking for Fearn blossom" is often used as euphemism for a sexual intercourse. There are of course a lot of various activities people do at this magic night like - predict future, do fertility and blessing rituals of the household, sing, dance, rejoice, celebrate my birthday etc. If you have any questions about it, feel free to post your questions.

Lieldienas

This year we had very snowy Easter:) But I managed to pick up some spring flowers the day before the snow appeared. You might ask why do I need flowers and why those eggs look like that. Well we have tradition to colour eggs using various materials - flowers, grains, coffee, all kind of green stuff and whatever else you might imagine. We take an egg, some of the things I mentioned and stick them to egg usually with the help of a thread or yarn and small piece of cloth. Actually you can use anything even stockings just to keep the green stuff (or whatever you have chosen) pressed to the egg. Then you boil some water with onion husk or whatever else that makes a nice colour e.g. beet,coffee or even tea, in it and you put the eggs you made in that water and boil for some 5-6 min depends on what kind of boiled eggs you like:) and then you take them out, unwind the eggs and you can get something like I got this year (in the picture). So happy Easter - or as we say in Latvian  - Priecīgas Lieldienas!

Medieval festivals

In Latvia we have lots of different castles and palaces. Moreover, one can attend some medieval festivals. However, sometimes the scenery might be quite funny.
I must say that all in all I really enjoyed this particular festival in Jaunpils despite some akward moments.

It might get really cold in winter and you might face a lot of snow. This particular picture was taken on 1st January 2011.

Are Latvians really rude?

During the intensive courses of the Latvian language I regularly find out new things about my mother tongue. For instance, last year students told me that Latvian contains a lot "Sh*t words". I was really surprised and could not understand why they say so. Everything became clear when they told me about their trip to Riga Central Market. In Latvia as in any other country, people don't use correct grammatical forms in their everyday speech, thus what is initially as "šis" or "tas" (this or that in translation)in everyday speech sounds like "šitas".