What a nice evening we spent with Samira at Eurowies’n Night today at Belvedere Palace. The Belvedere is a historic building complex in Vienna, consisting of two Baroque palaces, the Orangery, and the Palace Stables. The buildings are set in a Baroque park landscape and it houses the Belvedere museum now.
How did we get to know about it? We received invitations from our press bags stating that we need to be dressed up “beautiful, colourful, traditional”. Unfortunately we were not aware of this beforehand to bring at least some traditional accessories with ourselves from our countries. We thought that everyone will follow our thoughts so there will be no one wearing national costumes. But we were surprised, people took a lot of care and attention about this night. Most of the invited were dressed up “properly”.
By the way, at the entrance we were given two vouchers for free drinks each and a flute of proseco. We realized that they were giving a lot of drinks for free until they finish with them. After that we could use our vouchers for soft drinks and spirits.
It all started with the speech of the organizers of the event and the management of the Belvedere complex. The views of the area are amazingly beautiful. After a while, we met Bojana (Serbia), she was very open to public, taking picture and explaining the meaning of her traditional dress. The dress is a fusion of the southern and northern part of Serbia, but the shoes she’s wearing are very traditional in each part of the country.
From EuroParty, May 14 |
All of a sudden girls and boys started serving food to everyone. They served traditional food from each country (40 different dishes – starters, mains and deserts). We had Salmon cake from Norway, Prawns with egg from Denmark, Melon yoghurt salad from Cyprus, Chocolate kiss from Slovenia, Banana cake from Australia and many many many more! I don’t have that much time to describe the variety of foods that was offered.
At the same time music started. Traditional Austrian music. No, wait! It’s the Eurovision songs of this year sang the Austrian way with an ascent. Powerkryner was very energetic, very enthusiastic and full of life. The dancers – 6 girls are just awesome, they could dance and entertain public till morning I think. We found out that this band won an award in traditional Austrian contest as the best traditional band in Vienna last year.
Later on we met with some other participants from Moldova (Eduard Romanyta) and from Romania (Voltaj). They all were wearing their national costumes, and we received a gift from Eduard (a CD with Eurovision song + remix and 6 other songs).
From EuroParty, May 14 |
I think we are very lucky to visit such an event. We spent the time the best way ever with even some practical use – we got to know and taste a lot of traditional dishes. And you have to! Here’s the menu of today’s evening!
From EuroParty, May 14 |
Thank you very much wienerwiesnfest.at for this event!