
Posts Tagged ‘fun’


Week Two Winner – Europe’s Most Fun Festival To Compete In is….
And the winner of the 2014 One Small World Awards category of Europe’s Most Fun Festival To Compete In is….

A Head Full of Dreams and a Mouth Full of Bog Water – World Bog Snorkelling Championship
Mother Teresa is here, beer in hand. A Smurf ducks past a Fat Ballerina and onwards past a guy battling to tape jelly cubes to his arms. Around them, the crowd is directing furtive glances down into the brown, soupy water below and chattering in nervous excitement.

Oddball Olympics – The World Alternative Games
As the European Summer winds down – and so too does the European Bazaar project – One Small World has their eyes set on Gold as we return to the mecca of strange festivals for the ‘mad Olympics’, the World Alternative Games!

Mud, Sweat and Beers – Germany’s Mud Olympics
Driving north we are on the upward span of a long, arching bridge. Up ahead the girders of the bridge, set against the monotone grey-blue sky, make it look as if we are driving towards a door in the firmament, opening into a hazy Great Beyond.
It’s not too far from the truth. As we crest the bridge we can once again see over the pastures and fields of windmills that seem to roll on forever. The far north of Germany is almost as far into the Great Beyond as you can get and still be in continental Europe. The weather looks menacing but we’re heading to a festival where a little rain really won’t hurt anybody – Germany’s Wattolümpiade, the Mud Olympics.

Nun Bingo at the Hopping Procession of Echternach
For 1000 years the people of Echternach in Luxembourg have been celebrating the life and achievements of their chosen saint, the good St Willibrord. In fact, they’ve been celebrating it for so long that no one actually remembers why they celebrate the way they do.
They just do, and that’s good enough for them.

BYO Shotgun (Part 2) – Hide Your Hats; The Pirates are coming! Es Firo in Mallorca
If there’s been a common theme thus far with the Spanish festivals of European Bazaar, it has been the definite need of earplugs.
In March, at Valencia’s Las Fallas, it was the likelihood of having your eardrums popped like bubblegum by your close proximity to any one of a million fireworks. At the Mallorcan festival of Es Firo it’s probably going to be because there is a man dressed as a pirate and he appears to have bought his own shotgun to the festival…BOOM…
And that is only the beginning of the craziness.

Splash for Cash for Cancer – The World Water Bombing Championships
Nothing comes more naturally to kids (well at least boys) than the waterbomb. It seems to engage our most primal desire to make as much mess as possible along with our insuppressible urge to bodily throw ourselves off things. But in a world of No Running, No Splashing, and definitely NO WATERBOMBING, the window of years in which you can find a sneaky moment to waterbomb your friends and get away with it seems to be shrinking.