Greek Festival- Calgary

This one's for Auntie Vicky...

Calgary, like many small cities, had a Greek Festival in the Spring. Karen, by then had become my "woman in the know" of all the cultural goings-ons in Calgary, myself having gone with her and Victoria to the Lilac Festival the month before.

The Lilac Festival had not turned out to be a Calgarian version of elegant Floriade. It was a outdoor all day grunge street party near downtown with open pubs, rock bands and local merchandise stalls of all sorts. I was curious about what the Greek Festival would be like.

A bunch of Karen's girlfriends met us at the festival grounds, who all shared a common love of roast lamb. I liked them already. I had not eaten lamb since leaving Australia and I know from living 5 years as part of an extended Greek family that it is lamb that can join great nations together across cultural divides. It's just good eating.

The Greek festival was what you'd expect from a Greek festival. A large set of white marquees for food and drink, buy your roast lamb, souvlaki style by the pound, salad, bread and with baklava for dessert and sit on the long tables set up near the dance floor. There were demonstrations of traditional dancing by these kids in costume. It is always hard to take photos of children in public these days, I think some of the organisers assumed I was a parent and gave me the ok.

Later on, after a full belly of good Greek food a few of us had to have a go at the "freeforall" time of day on the dance floor. It's harder than it looks at first but so rhythmic that once you pick it up, it's kind of hard to stop.

Other fun stuff, there were promotional companies outside the main tents- Starbucks were having a hard time convincing anyone their coffee was better, and there was a new kind of exercise bike- pedel for your fruit smoothie, you've got to earn it !!! (I enjoyed watching this Dad being egged on by his kids). Also, one of Karen's friends and I had a go at Wii, a new computer game where we held portable "wands" and played tennis against each other on screen. It was great, I could pretend to play like Venus Williams, I could be Roger Federa, I could be Phillipousis with a bad knee/ankle/lovelife. I found playing Wii that Greek kids in Canada are the same as Greek kids around the world, many (not all) are overfed and spoilt.

There was one chubby girl who kept edging in on my friend, asking continuously, "CanIplay? CanIplay? CanIplay?" instead of waiting her turn. We handed the wands over, one step short of her throwing a 9 year old tantrum.

The Greeks have more culture than yoghurt. It's worth celebrating.