Monday Evening

The focus of the SD Retired Teachers' trip to Winnipeg is the Folkorama. When Winnipeg was 100 years old in 1969, the city wanted to celebrate and honor the cultures which had become a major part of the history of the city. There were four at that time. Thus Folklorama was born. For three evenings we will visit three different cultural pavilions, showcasing the culture and food (sometimes drink) of the people.

Our first pavilion visit tonight (6:00 PM) was the Scandinavian Culture center. First, we toured the displays of the 5 Scandinavian countries (includes Iceland) and then were entertained with native dances in native costumes and a group called Almost ABBA. The age of the dancers ranged from 2 1/2 to older than me.

We were served appetizers at this pavilion. We had a thin slice of a cold meat (reindeer??) on rye bread, a red cabbage slaw, a slice of cheese on bread and two meat filled "pasties". We also were served Viking Power Punch made with akavit as a native drink. All was very good. The entertainment was exceptional.

Then we were bussed to the Serbian Pavilion. The dinner and show began at 7:30.


We were served a stuffed yellow pepper, cabbage slaw, dinner roll, cookie and strawberry crepes.
One of our dinner drink choices was the Fort Garry Dark Ale. It was very good, as was the stuffed pepper and the cookie.


Young people dressed in native Serbian costumes entertained us with dances from the Serbian region (north of Greece). It was phenomenal! Outstanding! Amazing! Very Impressive Show!

I was captivated by the shoes that all the dancers wore. Every shoe had the turned up toe. This young lady was also wearing woolen stockings, hand-made, as were all the costumes. This Pavilion was putting on six shows each night. Our tour guide said the dancers wore a clean, dry white shirt for each performance as the shirt was soaked when they got done dancing. They will dance six times for seven nights. WOW!

A nearly full moon could be seen as we ventured to the Indian Pavilion at 9:00 for dessert and a show. The final cultural experience for the evening.

Mango ice cream was served for dessert. In the future, I probably would not order it if it were on the menu. (I think it may have been a "special" just for us.) By now we were quite tired.

We were introduced to "bollywood" (Bombay & Hollywood) dancing and music for the program. Although the costumes were traditional Indian dress and some of the movements were traditional Indian dance movements, the program was Indian hip-hop. Again, the dancers were young people, probably high school age and a few younger. But it was just very hard to exceed the performances of the Serbian dancers.

We arrived at the hotel at 11:00 PM. Three different cultural experiences tomorrow night.