Once upon a time

My Space has just given me back my old blog posts from the past. This way some real treasures have returned to me and I'm very happy about it. To give you an idea why I love these old memories I have a copy of a very special adventure blog today. Enjoy!

Fantasydays 2008

When I planned to go to the Fantasydays on Burg Satzvey not too far from Cologne, I didn't expect very much. As I never read or saw the "Lord of the Rings" or any other fantasy story except for Harry Potter, there was no way to imagine what could be there. I only knew the little video on YouTube, showing nice surroundings and a few dressed up persons and the photos on the Fantasydays' website with many people dressed in medieval clothes. Ordinary people looked like aliens, so I decided to wear a long skirt, a loose blouse and to put some flowers and butterflies into my braided hair. Everybody would have starred at me in town, but at the Fantasydays I was just on the border between the two worlds.

The castle Satzvey looked like placed in a Fairy tale, except for the huge colourful balloons swimming on the lake in front of the castle. The balloons were the only thing that didn't fit the decorations.

Walking through the archway we saw an ancient book: it was the Never-ending story. Coming into the first yard, we noticed shops and stalls selling lots of medieval things and decorations from the fantasy world, like the talking Hat from Hogwarts. The program had announced the group "Dunkelschön" for that time, but we didn't hear any music. There was a little stage in the yard, but with no equipment for music. We strolled past the food stalls and through another arch into the castle grounds. There were more stalls, but also displays of magical worlds I had never heard of. Here we also came across the first persons who had changed themselves into creatures of other worlds. 

Dressing up would be an understatement. There were fairies and elves, people who had sprung out of the stone age, monsters, knights, pirates, belly dancers and many, many people in medieval clothes of all standings. There was also a throne on which I sat down to get a photo taken. Later a friend said she was afraid to get near it so I wonder about it's meaning in the fantasy world.

There was a space with competitions like shooting with arrows or fighting with swords, a camp from former times with a smith working on iron and someone making leather pouches by hand, knights and ladies in front of very old fashioned tents. We met all the figures of Oz, Fiona (Shrek's wife), a unicorn and many more. 

Behind the lawn were stages where stories of the Lord of Rings were shown and fights of knights as well. But I only read about it on the program, time was much too short to see and hear everything! On the other side was the "shopping-mall" selling jewellery, medieval weapons, fantasy clothes and crafts. Even muggles like me could change themselves with little horns or/and special stick-on ears into a creature from your imagination. It took rather long just to walk along everything once as we had to stop every few steps to take another photo. And everyone loved to be on the photo! I wonder how the fantasy people ever made it to the toilet as they had to pose for photos all the time.

Finally we found the second yard and the real stage for the bands. We only heard the last 3 songs from Dunkelschön, although I had planned to hear much more of them. Unfortunately the electricity stopped working, so their music couldn't be amplified. For their last song with the harp, all 5 musicians came down from the stage and stood just before the audience. 

It was my only chance to take a video of this fascinating band. (At home I noticed, that there was too much noise from the audience, but it still became a treasure.) 

 

In the centre of the yard were many large tables and benches, surrounded by food stalls and little restaurants. 

Amazingly there was nothing related with soccer although it was the start of the European Championship that day. THANK YOU!

We did several rounds of the grounds until we came back to the yard and the evening concert of John Kelly and Maite Itoiz. After the concert and hanging on for photos and autographs, we decided to have a look into the Disco, where they were playing music from the 80s. It must have been 17 years since I danced in a disco for the last time but in this place between the worlds, nobody knew us and after dancing a while at the edge, we joined the pirates, warriors and medieval folks on the dance floor. After about 2 hours dancing non-stop, the disco was closed. But it has been such fun!!! We had to leave the castle through a tiny door as the large gates were already closed at 1:30 am. We only had a short walk to our accommodation and soon slept tightly.

On Sunday morning we had a cosy and long breakfast and then went back to the castle. We met another friend and did some shopping until it was time for another concert of John and Maite. There were even more and different people in costumes than on Saturday and I could easily have spent all day there again, but we had to leave at about 2 pm to pack and travel home.