As I understand it Lille was the cultural capital of Europe in 2004 and they liked the attention they got so now, 5 years later, they once again organised a grand festival to attract cultural . . . stuff to Lille.

Or something like that at least.

All I know was that I had to go to Lille because Raphaelle couldn’t come to Holland as she had to sing.

Perhaps I should have done some more research into the thing. I hadn’t quite grasped the scope of the festival. The thing I went to was the opening ceremony of the festival while the actual thing will last ’till summer.
Perhaps there is interesting stuff to come still.

Things went much as I had expected during the afternoon. There were some statues. Some animal activism. I took some nice pictures of Raph and the rest of her choir. Though the rhythm of the chattering teeth wasn’t quite in 7/8 things sounded quite good.

The night came and it was quite a bit more crowded than I had expected. The baby statues’ street was made blue together with this square.

But lots of people and some blue paper maché over lamp-post does not a Festival make.

A giant internally glowing . . . well Giant does. Or at least it makes a decent starting point.
The dude just sorta walked along the square squishing people that didn’t get out of the way fast enough. He was followed by a ball and another giant. There was a drum band as well but they were hanging in a black sky with some lights on them. Didn’t really make pretty pictures.
While the giant came past a wall of people came up to greet him.

Further on was a choir of 700 people singing their lungs out. Due to poor lighting conditions I have some pretty yellow smudges on my computer for the people that really want to see it. Though one of the singers put some of those up on her website.

After that the singing the Giants took their leave and I had to undertake a measure of counter-survivalist behaviour.
Going toward big flames with cannonfire is something that has been tagged as a really bad move by countless successful generations before us. Yet I made my way towards it.

I should have listened to those nagging genes in the back of my head. 10 minutes later I was in a tightly packed crowd as the wind shifter and I got all the smoke of 2 giant bonfires in my eyes.

Beyond the fire (or in my case after a 10 minute detour. There really were a lot of people about) there was the closing fireworks.

All in all I would say that it was a nice opening for a Festival.

Next post: Paris, here’s already the link to the pictures.

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Quote of the Day:

Well, if crime fighters fight crime and fire fighters fight fire. What do freedom fighters fight?

- George Carlin