Hello, community.
In the last days of summer, I was lucky enough to attend a festival in Winterswijk. Everything there was typical for such festivals: music, disco, entertainment, food and drinks. But there was one peculiarity. I had never seen anything like it before. These are large themed figures completely decorated with flowers. This is one of the features of this holiday. It takes place every year. In a way, it's like a city day. Everyone already knows about the event and is looking forward to it. I was particularly impressed by the scale of the celebration. It starts on Thursday evening and ends on Sunday. All these days people are off. They have fun, have fun, communicate with each other and fully enjoy life.
I'm not from here, so it was hard for me to capture the general euphoria. I was also unaccustomed to such noisy festivities. All the time I felt that something was missing from this holiday. Then I realised that it was just my habit and the Ukrainian mentality speaking. That is, just relaxing is not enough, you need spectacles, performances, master classes, etc. What I liked and was most impressed with during the whole holiday were the incredible figures. Each of them is a real work of art. I think a lot of work, time and resources have been invested.
I wish I could have seen the column of figures moving down the street. I only managed to see them on a specially designated square. These masterpieces stood there until the official closing of the festival.
I looked at the designs for a long time. As far as I understood, the idea itself was discussed first, because this year's theme is coexistence with the world around us, nature protection, etc. On the information stands are descriptions from local legends, stories about animals and the idea of the composition. Then the engineers developed the layout, determined the dimensions, necessary details and made drawings. Next came the stage of assembling the figures. Children from local schools, employees of organisations and companies that had applied to participate in the flowerpot competition were actively involved. Because this is really a competition. Each exhibit has a number and an information plate.
The last stage was to decorate all parts of the figure with flowers. The Netherlands is a country of flowers, so it is hard to imagine the amount of flowers used to decorate the figures. Mostly chrysanthemums were used. Small full flowers covered every detail with a dense cover. Some of the flowers were dyed, some remained in their natural colour.
There are a lot of animal figures. Both domestic and wild animals are very much loved and protected here.
An impressive amount of labour and artistic imagination. You can stand and look at each composition for hours. I never cease to be amazed at how organically and neatly everything is built. These are truly masterpieces.
There were a lot of people around the figures. Everyone wanted to take a closer look and take pictures of them. I was taking photos too.
