Many places are celebrating Pust this Saturday (22/02), with the Shrovetide/pagan carnival giving people an excuse to dress up and take part in, or watch and thus enhance, a variety of ethnographic spectacles and traditions. Not least of these will be the parades featuring characters such as the UNESCO recognised kurenti – the hairy guys with bells – along with witches, idiots, whip-crackers and more, as seen in the following photographs and which you can read more about here.
Wherever you are in Slovenia you shouldn't be too far somewhere doing something like this, if not on Saturday then in the days after, and if you're lucky enough to be around some of the bigger celebrations then it's a good idea to make sure your phone and / or camera battery is fully charged. I took the pictures shown above at last year’s Dragon Parade in Ljubljana, to be held again this Saturday, starting at 11:00 in Prešeren Square, but also making its way through the streets to end up with an entertainment programme in Kongresni trg / Zvezda Park.