Terchova Folk Festival - Mala Fatra

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We headed to the village of Terchova in the Mala Fatra hills to catch a Slovak folk festival. Folk tradition and music is very much alive in Slovakia and people seem to be very keen to keep it alive. In the more rural villages there are a lot of farmers living off the land in quite a simple way. There are a number of communities around who are purposely trying to live and farm as the generations before them did. This is quite a contrast to the flash cars and shopping centres we have seen in the bigger towns.

Wildlife
In the guesthouse we stayed we were chatting to one of the locals, Vlado, over a glass of wine. Managed to talk to him in German for about 2 hours allbeit with a lot of hand symbols and some bits of confusion.
Vlado explained that he dosen't need to know english here as most of the tourists are from Germany, Austria, Swiss of neighbouring countires such as Poland and Czech Rep.
Vlado is a tour guide and forrest ranger and all round bush man. I was asking him about fishing and which bait is best to use and raised his hands and explained how he just uses his bare hands to catch fish.
Vlado also told us there are a lot of Wolfs, Lynx ans some Bears in the forrest and showed us some pictures on footprints on his digital camera to prove this. I'm glad we found this out after we'd hiked as I may have found it dificult to convince Shilpa to go hiking here!!

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Photos

Free for all Orchastra
In the main hall there were about 50 musicians paying folk songs together, mostly very young which was great to see as they will be keeping the music alive into the next generation.

Singing Folk
The music and songs are a big part of the folk tradition and we were looking forward to seeing some of the slovak music.

Big Flute
This 2m long flute is called Fujara. I asked one of the locals what the songs were about and he said "Sheep, Forrest, Mountains or Man and Woman!!"

Folk in the hallway
These guys got restless in the main hall with all the other musicians so they took their instruments to the hall way beside the loos and had their own session. The guy in the white jumper could barely stand up he was so hammered but he could play the 'cymbel' zylaphone thing with speed and accuracy.

Ice Hockey
Watching Ice Hockey with the locals. They love their ice hockey here and its on the TV in every bar most of the time, if not a live match replays are on.

Hiking the Mala Fatra
We've had our first rainy day in 2 months!! After 2 days of lazing about due to the weather we back hiking. We can't seem to get enough of hiking these days!

Waterfalls
The walks in Mala Fatra were on a par with Slovensky Raj. We saw more beautiful gorges with mixed deciduos and conifer forrests.

Religious Rock
The rock at the top is supposed to look like someone praying.
Even with the rain the drive around the mala fatras was stunning.

View from Guesthouse
We decided to splash out and stay in a guesthouse for the night as their were no campsites in the area and we'd been wild camping for 3 days. The view from our balcony looked over the beautiful little village of Stefanova.

Wolf Village
The village of Vlkolinec (Wolf Village) where all the building are still in the traditional folk style. A UNESCO World Heritage site.

May Pole
Some villages celebrate the 1st of May with a May pole and dance around it, very similar to the way its done in England. Not sure how or if the traditions are linked? something to find out.

Street Folk
We met these guys hanging around the street and they played a few tunes then and there for us. One of their mates had worked in Spar in Galway for a while. He didn't have much english so we couldn't ask him what he thought of Ireland, and his mate who could speak english was too drunk to translate.