Weddings and a Festival in Ptuj

Saturday, Aug. 6, 2016—Ptuj

Note:  Yesterday's blog entry has now been updated with links.

We had a casual morning. I prepared our breakfast, and we sat out on the deck to eat it. The rain had passed during the night, and the air was a bit cool. It felt much better than the heat. Just about the time we finished eating, the walkers headed up the trail to the castle started coming by. They looked at us and probably thought they were watching locals eating outside.

We headed up the trail ourselves after cleaning up. Our house is about halfway up from the main street to the castle, so it wasn’t much more of a climb to reach it. The views from up there are great. We took photos of the red tile roofs of the town, of the river and the lake it flows into, of the mountains in the distance (which could clearly be seen due to the rain having cleared the skies overnight), of the castle itself, etc. The castle is not a great one, but it is interesting. We skipped seeing the musical instrument museum and the weapons museum. We were really just interested in the building itself and the views from the top of the hill.

Coming down from the castle, we discovered that Saturday apparently is marriage day in Ptuj. We heard a band playing on the main square and thought maybe it was for the festival. But when we got there, we could see it was in front of the Town Hall rather than on the stage, and it was surrounded by a crowd of people drinking with a bride and groom in the center. Soon, they were off with the band continuing to play as they all walked in a processional. We followed them enjoying the music. They went to a nearby parking lot where more drinking continued. But at the parking lot, another group was getting ready. They had their own band which was in native costumes vs. the t-shirts and pants the previous band had been wearing. We waited. After a few photos, the new bride and groom, led by their band, headed down the street toward the Town Hall. We followed them. When they got there, they waited outside. Soon a wedding party that had already been inside the Town Hall when we arrived started coming out. Apparently, there is a wedding every 30 minutes until everyone scheduled that Saturday has been married. So wedding parties, each accompanied by a band, proceed from the parking lot to the Town Hall, enter on the hour or the half-hour, come out after the ceremony, and proceed back to the parking lot one-after-another. Wedding party members all wear a small pin with ribbons in the color of the wedding so that they don’t get with the wrong groups; we saw a green and white party, a purple and white party, and others. From the parking lot, they then leave in cars with lots of honking as they probably make their way to a location for the after-wedding party. At one point around 14:00, there was a traffic jam of honking cars as new groups tried to get to the parking lot as other groups finished with their ceremonies tried to pull out to go to their receptions.

The reason the weddings are held in the Town Hall is probably related to the years of communism when all weddings were required to be civil ceremonies. Most Town Halls have very elegant reception rooms, so having a wedding there is likely to be just as special in terms of the atmosphere of the structure as having one in a church would be. I’m sure that those who also want a church ceremony are now allowed to do so, but I bet they have set up their new democratic governments to require a civil ceremoney at the Town Hall even when there is a church wedding since every privilege of being married is really granted by law rather than the church—tax benefits, citizenship of a married couple’s children, leave from work related to having a new baby, inheritances, division of property in case of a divorce, etc.

After resting at the house for part of the afternoon and eating a dinner on our patio, we headed back to the center of town for the Oswald’s Fair activities--a celebration of the anniversary of it being named as a city. Several stages were set up around the downtown area with bands or disc jockeys playing music. The bands mostly played polkas and waltzes. But each had its own style, and it was possible to tell which seemed more accomplished or experienced in comparison to the others. What was amazing was that each band performed about 3 hours with only a very brief break somewhere in the middle of that period. How they had the stamina to perform so long with one song immediately following another is just amazing to consider. We had thought we would watch more than one band on each stage, but indications were that the entertainment would continue until 3:00 and that bands would change only about every 3 hours. Here are videos by the band we saw the most.  

While circling by all the stages regularly, we checked all the local foods being served at booths—cevepcici, kielbasa sausages in a sauce that looked a lot like chili, charcoal-broiled chops, etc. By 10:30, we were tired, found that we had had our fill of polkas and waltzes, and headed back to the house to try to sleep. We had to close all the windows and doors plus use earplugs to try to muffle the sounds.

We investigated every possible way to get out of there to catch our train to Zagreb tomorrow. Although Zagreb is closer than Ljubljana (which is only about 2 ½ hours away on local trains making lots of stops), it is going to take us about 7 ½ hours to travel to Zagreb tomorrow. Part of the reason is that it is Sunday with more limited options for trains/buses than weekdays. But the other reason is that going from country to country here has very limited options every day. Our best bet tomorrow is to return to Maribor by bus, wait two hours, take a train to Zidani Most, wait another 40 minutes, then take a train to Zagreb from there.