Slovenia: Pust

Just back from a great long weekend in Slovenia. This past weekend, Slovenia celebrates a carnival - "Pust" - where most people dress up in costumes and parade through the town. (See here on Wikipedia.) Hana and Lina dressed up as a bee and a ladybird, and their cousin as a dinosaur. The grown-ups dressed as Dalmations. We had a great time parading through the streets of Mislinja barking at the locals :-) [And we won one of the prizes!]

The Carnival is to invite in the Spring, and to scare away the Winter. In Ptuj there is a special version where the "Kurent" scares away the winter. It seems the origin of Kurent is lost in history, but the costume is really impressive:

I'd love to be in Ptuj for the Carnival. Apparently there were 10,000 people in this year's parade and there were 700 kurenti!