Will’s View

Lake Bled is a stupidly picturesque lake just north-west of Ljubljana, the capital of Slovenia. I have posted some photos of this place, but in order to visualise how amazing it is, fire up the old imagination and try this on for size: A glassy-still lake with an island in the middle of it. On the island is a church which has steps leading down to the water. Overlooking this lake is a castle perched on an impossibly-sheer cliff which drops directly down to the water. Definitely a scene worth borrowing for a movie or three!

We just happened (through sheer dumb luck) to be at this lake for the annual lake festival called Blejski Dnevi or ‘Days of Bled‘. There were all the things one expects of an annual regional celebration: local foods; local beers; and oddly-dressed marching bands playing local music. All of which are most novel and interesting for a foreigner like myself.

But Lake Bled refused to let Blejski Dnevi pass without adding a little something to the normal proceedings. There was a laser light-show (projected onto the sheer cliff on which the castle sits looking out over the lake with the island in the middle with the church on it) of the famous sights of Europe accompanied by an original score blared out over large speakers. There was also the requisite fireworks display. But still there were further heights of pomp and celebration to be observed: hundreds of candles floating on the lake.

The effect of these candles was most spectacular, especially with the church on the island in the background. It wasn’t until the next day however that we found the candles had in fact been placed in eggshells. Each candle had been individually placed into an eggshell which had been cut open for the purpose, and assumedly the contents used for the local cooking we had enjoyed the day previous. I thought it was rather an innovative solution, rather than buying costly floating candles from the China or somewhere. I must say though, there were then hundreds of burnt-out eggshells for civil servants to go and collect the next day, what a task!

This entry was posted on Friday, July 25th, 2008 at 11:12 pm and is filed under Purely Informative (hah). You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.