Gozo - The Feast of St. George and other random thoughts

Steve and I have at last recovered from our summer colds... it always happens after school ends. Luckily we made it here before getting sick! I was worried we'd both get it before we left and then they wouldn't let us on the plane. Honestly, we just kept saying to each other "Don't relax yet!" so we could put it off until we got here. All is well now and we are both feeling good again 😀

Obviously, with Covid restrictions now, we stayed home while we were sick... so we became very closely acquainted with the two rooms in our apartment! And of course... I didn't have much to report. Don't worry, I'm not feeling sad about missing two weeks... we have seven glorious weeks here!

Now that we are out and about again, I can regale you with all my random thoughts and musings!

First a side note to Pringles in Canada... please please please please PLEASE bring the Paprika Pringles to Canada. They are delicious!

I only allow myself a tiny container a few times a week... because these things are addictive!

The important happening in Gozo this week is the Feast of St. George. St. George is the patron saint and protector of Gozo, so this Festa is a very big deal here. Since last week there have been decorations and statues going up, never ending fireworks (the noisy and the pretty kind!), celebrations, parades and general excitement. I'll give you a glimpse into some of it.

(Honestly I can't tell you how serious they take it... and I'm certainly not going to write it all here... but this website can give you great detail if you are interested! Feast of St. George, Gozo )

They have been decorating the streets with lights and huge banners all week!

They celebrate with "internal" and "external" festivities. This basically boils down to the church stuff and the party stuff. They seem very devoted to both of these things.

One thing that seems to be a very important part of this is the fireworks. As well as having the beautiful fireworks at night, every day has A LOT of the loud ones. These ones don't display lights, but basically sound like cannons firing. For instance as I write this, the church bells have been ringing and the loud explosions have been going on for at least 10 minutes. It is quite disconcerting at first as it does sound like war explosions. I read somewhere (I can't find the source now) that the noises are meant to keep evil spirits away.

As well as those loud noises, there are a lot of church bells ringing... quite often... and for extended periods of time. (Update: We are 30 minutes since I started writing this and the bells are still ringing!) 

As we were sitting in a restaurant in St. George's Square one evening, we could see the young man physically ringing the bell... not everything is automated these days!

There are also parades, bands playing, and carrying of the statues through the village. There is more than one St. George statue (I think I heard there are 5!) that parade on different days and are put up on pillars in different areas of the village. 

Here is one of the statues being lifted to it's place in St. George's Square.

This parade came down our street the other night. (Steve filmed this from our window) You can see that as well as the band, local people are eager to participate in the festivities.

They also take the statues into the church during mass (I am assuming to be blessed). It is a great honour to be chosen to carry the statue. It also seems like a physically taxing job. The statues aren't small! I love this next video... especially part way through where you can hear an exuberant young person singing their heart out 💖

It's Thursday now, and the Festa continues until Sunday, so I think we can expect more bells ringing, more fireworks, more parades, and more bands!

One of the things we love about Gozo is the ministry of culture really goes all out to provide musical entertainment (mostly for free) on any given night in the summer. There seems to be at least one choice each evening, and often more than one! I think this is amazing for an island that only has a population of around 32,000 people!

We were lucky enough to enjoy one of the bands on Monday evening in the village of Marsalforn. The band was billed as "Sarah and Band" and turned out to be a tremendous singer accompanied by our favourite Gozitan guitarist, Danny! (among other bandmates). We made our way down to Marsalforn, sat down in a bar right in front of the public stage and enjoyed some drinks and a delicious pizza while listening to the music!

Here we are... happy to finally be symptom free and able to go out and finally enjoy Gozo!

And here is a photo of Steve with the stage in the background with the band getting ready to play.

We've finally also been able to connect with our wonderful friends Suzy and Michael. We had a lovely dinner with them last evening and enjoyed sitting out on their terrace. On one side of their terrace you can see the moonrise...

And on the other side the spectacular colours of the sunset...

So with beautiful sunsets, architecture, festas and culture... do you see now why we love Gozo so much?