A day is a long time in carnival. Blink and you’ll miss it. That was certainly not the case for Pigtown Fling, as we didn’t miss a moment on their trip to Kurentovanje Carnival, Ptuj, Slovenia. More…

Hotel Mitra created this short video to promote our visit to carnival in Ptuj.

Time passes quickly, and before you can say Nikoli Ni Ves it was time to leave. One more job to go though. The local tourist board is keen to expand the links between Slovenia and Scotland and wanted to do a photo and video shoot at the castle. It was bitterly cold, the fiddle couldn’t cope with the temperature so Sara had to mime the whole thing. More…

Today we started with one of the more bizarre of our gigs. In the heavy snow we made our way to the local shopping mall, Qlandia, where we wandered about in our Scottish Kurent costumes playing pipes and drums and generally harassing the local shoppers and shop keepers. This seems to go down really well and it’s not the first time we have played here, but can you imagine the same thing in Braehead?? More…

Today we had a delightful gig playing for a local Mother and Baby group… unlikely I know but we will play tunes at any opportunity. 2 of our friends are new mothers so this was our favour to them. It was really sweet and we played some gentle tunes and let the kids bang some drums and twang some strings. We all really enjoyed it. More…

Today started with us donning our Scottish version of the Kurent costume. These were initially devised for our now dufunct Portuguese style pipe band that Rob and I used to play in. We marched around outside the hotel wearing these costumes as everybody made their way towards the town centre for the main carnival procession. More…

Tonight’s job was to teach the Slovenians our dances. The dining room was cleared and we had a good urn out of eager dancers. They were very keen and learned very quickly and everyone had a great evening. More…

Not getting to bed particularly early on day 2 meant a late start for some on day 3. Today we had our first gig in Hotel Mitra. We started out in the corner of the hotel lounge with one microphone but it quickly became apparent that we would be better moving around like gypsy bands do. More…

After our long drive to Slovenia, despite pretty extreme tiredness, we made straight for the carnival tent. This is the main venue for the carnival and must hold a couple of thousand people. Serbian Turbo folk superstar Mile Kitic was the main act. More…

Haven’t had any time to write yet so just a quick update. Drove about 900 miles yesterday through France, Belgium, Netherlands, Germany and Austria. We made it earlier than expected, had a great time in the tent then met some kurents who took us to there base where we played tunes, danced and drank slivovic.
I’ll try to write more when I get a chance.