When people gather to have some fun and others come to watch them, it’s a festival.
If the fun is flying kites, then it’s a kite festival.
And if people flying kites come from different countries, it’s an International kite festival.
A formal definition of an international kite festival: an IKF is when more than one person (“festival”) coming from more than one country (“international”) fly more than one kite (“kites”).
So the moment Cisca and Sergeja lifted their kites, we had an IKF!
Some background: Cisca and Peter Theunissen from the Colors in the Sky kite club, Netherlands, and their world famous kite dog Boris travel every year around Europe, moving leisurely from one kite festival to another.
But this year they become something of a climate refugees: the cold and the incessant rain that enveloped most of Central Europe and Italy (with a devastation that is both horrible and unprecedented – the floods causing death and destruction).
They were not trying to find a kite festival anymore, but a dry and at least a bit warmer place.
So they came to Slovenia.
At first it was still cold and wet, but on their second day the weather showed some mercy. As Ivor and Sergeja were already planning a dinner inviting both Colors in the Sky and KAP Jasa kite teams at their place in Stožice (a northern suburb of Ljubljana), they had an idea: let’s try to fly some kites before we eat!
And thus the International kite festival IKF Stožice 2023 was born.
With four people – and a dog! – flying kites it was probably the smallest international kite festival ever, and the sweetest too. People were stopping their cars in the middle of the road, waving, honking, taking photos … even the police came by to check out the aerial spectacle
And Boris was of course the main attraction:
We did some kite aerial photography. It was not a very impressive KAP session, but it really didn’t matter.
And then it was dinner time. Ivor prepared all sorts of entrées with Venetian, Mediterranean, Levantine, and Slovenian recipes, Mirza brought a fantastic burek, and the star of the evening was a huge sea bass, prepared in the simplest way, in an oven. It was fantastic!
We had some affogato and we talked into the night – and the next day Cisca, Peter and Boris left for Austria and on to the Netherlands, still running from the rain and cold.
It was such a perfect day – flying kites with friends, eating like kings, discussing this and that … a day that made us all happy and proud to be a part of the great kite flying community!
Kite aerial photos shot with Nikon P330 on The New Blue rokkaku.
It was a pleasure to be there. Thank you al for the hospitality
Greeting Peter, Cisca and Boris.
The pleasure was all ours! 😉
And it was really fun … must do it again!