Warsaw was raw

Enjoyed an unexpected treat tonight here in Warsaw. It's midsummers festival here ('Slaska Noc Swietojanska' in Polish, I'm told, but I don't know if it's true, cos it's all Greek to me) and the entire population of Warsaw it seems is out on the streets celebrating. The whole place has gone crazy with fireworks and street shows, and in the words of the famous palindrome - Warsaw was raw.

Many of the young girls (and some of the nicer young men) are wearing garlands of flowers on their heads (Garlands on the Vistula was the headline), and there is a tradition of casting a huge (and I mean HUGE) ring of flowers on floats into the river and watching it disappear down to the sea. There is also a huge festival here, mainly composed of beer and other falling down substances which are flowing freely. A biplane with it's tail billowing white smoke was also a feature of the festival, but I hope he didn't touch the falling down stuff, because he was busy for about ten minutes buzzing low over the vast audience of tens of thousands of spectators.

The highlight of the evening for me was undoubtedly the free rock concert which featured among others, the highly impressive Polish singer Kayah. If you haven't heard of her, you probably never will, but she's world famous here in Polish land. In Europe she's gone platinum although her hair remains jet black. I will let the photograph do the talking for the visuals, but you will need to download her music and hear it to believe it. It's a fusion mix of jazz, techno and funk with some Arabic wailing from a megaphone thrown in for good measure. Polish TV covered the event live and I'm glad I was there to witness it (the festival, not the TV coverage). It was a great way to end the week... and I'm going home tomorrow.