June 4, 2001

The annual rose festival takes place every year in a town called Kazanluk. This is where most of the rose oil is produced throughout Bulgaria. Thousands of fields of roses are grown here outside of the town and they are harvested to make the very valuable substance – rose oil. Rose oil is basically used in perfumes, but can be used in other ways as we found out when we sampled the rose rakia and the rose jelly.

The festival took place on the weekend of June first and lasted all weekend. Some of the events were an art exhibit, a carnival, the crowning of a Rose Princess and Prince ceremony with fire works followed by a disco and finally the great event of the rose picking.

My favorite part of the weekend by far was the rose picking ceremony. The ceremony began early in the morning and lasted only about an hour. The ceremony was attended by the mayor, the rose prince and princess, and many special guests many of them being foreigners. The volunteers living in that town organized mini buses to take around 20 volunteers to the ceremony. When we arrived we spotted the Rose Prince and Princess posing for pictures in front of the fields surrounded by T.V. cameras and people taking pictures. Shortly after some women in traditional dress appeared with large baskets of rose petals and some rose head pieces and lei’s that were given to many of the guests, they were beautiful! The Prince and Princess led us up to the rose field where the crowd was allowed to pick and wander among the roses. There were Bulgarian folk musicians singing and playing as we all wander and picked the fragrant pink roses.

Not long after the picking began the crowd begin moving to an adjacent field where a Bulgarian group of folk dancers were dancing and others were joining in the traditional dance. After the dancing had stopped a different group of dancers came to the circle. These dancers are called the cookery. It is a group of men wearing huge bells around their hips and masks. They are a sight to see and to hear. They make a great noise dancing in a circle together, along with this group of dancers came two men dressed like a camel and even a man dressed like a woman. This type of group usually has its own festival during the winter, but they were brought out to help celebrate the day.

We enjoyed the festival and as I stood looking at all that was going on around me I was excited to find that it felt quite familiar to me and that I knew much about the dances and traditions because of experiences through the year. I am sure this helped me to enjoy the ceremony even more. We carried the sent of the roses with us throughout the day wearing them in our hair and taking small bouquets with us but I hope the fragrance last much longer than that!

-Kate