Ptuj, Slovenia - Ptuj Castle - Pust Festival - P-Day

About a 30 minute drive from Maribor is the ancient city of Ptuj (Pa two ee) which displays a large castle covered hill overlooking the town.  Ptuj is a charming slow city, which has been around since the stone age.  Under developed by moderization it continues to be a wonderful tourist attraction.

As a mission zone the Slovene missionaries and President & Sister Melonokas attended the last day of Kurentovanje or the Pust Festival in Ptuj.  

Words taken from Rick Steves" best describe the festival events:

Locals dress up in elaborate costumes and parade through the streets, celebrating the end of winter and heralding the arrival of spring. It seems quaint today, but in the Middle Ages, Kurentovanje was deadly serious. The winter is particularly harsh here, so when spring began to approach, the peasants wanted to offer encouragement.  They'd put on frightening masks and costumes and parade around making as much noise as possible to scare of the winter. 

Kurentovanje's most notable character is Kurent, a fun-loving Slavic pagan god covered with fur and has a long red tongue, horns, a snout, whiskers, red ringed eyes, a wooden club with a spiny hedgehog skin wrapped around one end, and red or green socks. It wears a chain of five bells around its waist and jumps around and s wings its hips to get them clanging as loudly as possible. Kurents travel together in packs, so the combined noise can be deafening.  

We watched the closing festival, the burning of old man winter and took the train back to Maribor.  It was very cold and snowing most of the day, so the warmth of the train was most welcome.