The Coming Together of People In Festive Spirits

The title above translates the word "Payiniri". It was another Saturday when my hyenas and I decided to witness the annual festival of the Greek culture at Musgrave Park, West End. It was my second time, but the experience remained trully enjoyable. One thing I forgot to mention about Brisbane is its cultural festivals that run throughout the year and I simply love to watch people around the states and around the world gather to share this happiness.

We started our day adventuring traditional Greek food. The pastries were generally sweet...or rather SUPER-sweet..so sweet that I can't think of any other sweet food to compare with. Of all that we tried, I find Haloumi cheese the best, Honey Puffs is something you don't want to miss. And since many people were going for the Greek beer, we had a go too and turned out that it wasn't as 'wow' as it seemed to be (maybe I'm just not a beer person). We spent our day moving from one stall to another and stuffed ourselves with a variety of food.

The atmosphere was lightened up with music and dances, which is something that I always look forward to in cultural festivals. We took the chance to join the crowd and learned simple dance steps from the Hellenic dancers. It was a lot of laughters, and we weren't quite sure what we were really doing, except to move along with the music and trying to follow the rhythm at the same time. It was just so amazing to watch and to experience with the young and old on the dance floor. I definitely had a lot of fun!

Towards the evening, we visited the Greek orthodox church. Although I've been there last year, this year was more promising as we had the opportunity to witness the church's evening service. The service was quite interesting. It was something that I've never seen in my life. The church's choir/prayer/chant (i'm not quite sure) was something new to me. I have heard similar stuff like that before over the CD player but to hear and watch it right in front of my eyes was remarkable. I absolutely love the art and architecture of the building. It is something that you don't find it in other christian churches.

The festival was huge and we didn't have enough time to cover all the other events. Nevertheless, we had a glimpse of the Greek culture and most importanty, we had a good time!

p/s: I've uploaded some videos (the Greek festival as well as the Buddha festival) in Multiply, so if anyone wants to view the videos, my account name is 'dolce'.