Tag: oświęcim

Memoir of Eastern European Tour 2010: Quick Overview pt. 1

I remember when we visited Eastern Europe in 2010 – so many stories from that trip.  We planned the trip in order to attend Koprivstica, a Bulgarian celebration of folk music, dance, crafts, and nationalistic self-determinism. When we first heard of Koprivstica, it was from this fellow: He said that in 2005, it rained cats and dogs all week, and he was forced to take shelter in a barn with a bunch of strangers from around the world, and it was flooding…. and it was the best folk music festival he had ever been to!  It only happens every five years, so we planned on making the 2010 event.  In 2010, it didn’t rain, and every day was a day spent in a beautiful, historical mountain village in Bulgaria.  The festival grounds are about a 20 minute walk from town, so we got to breathe in a lot of that mountain air.  More on that in the book. We ended up going early in order to attend the Krakow Yiddish Festival (http://www.jewishfestival.pl/), where we made acquaintance with a variety of luminaries of the current klezmer scene, including Yiddish Dance Master Steven Weintraub, Musikants Benji Fox-Rosen, Dan Blacksburg, Deborah Strauss, Christian