Festival of Light

Today I want to write about Festival of Light that is held each year in Belgrade (and I believe also Novi Sad) at the beginning of February. Reason for this festival is celebrating Lunar New Year, so date is not fixed, but mostly it's 2-3 weeks in February. If you didn't know, Lunar (or how we call it here, Chinese) New Year that is celebrated with new moon between 21st of January and 20th of February, and the celebration is lasting for 15 days. Here we don't celebrate it, but there are many Chinese people living here and this Festival of Light is in honor of Lunar New Year, I would say also as way of representing and supporting other cultures as well.

Event is organized by Balkanopolis center, with support of Chinese ambassy. I visited this festival in 2019 for the first time, and that was when it was held first time, but next 2 years I didn't go, and this year I went there again. First time it was organized on Kalemegdan Fortress, which is in city center, and very popular and visited place. Figures were displayed among tree and somehow for me it was perfect place for the event. Kalemegdan is very visited so even people who didn't know for the festival could just see it while walking there, and it was free so anyone could visit it. I really liked it back then, and didn't know that light figures could be so interesting. Since the place was park with not much city lights around, figures were shown perfectly. I will share some photos from back then with you.

It was truly magical and walking around there made me feel like I was in fairy tale, or like Alice in Wonderland. There was so many different figures, deer, sand clocks, flowers and bugs, pandas, penguins, cages, some traditional Chinese figures... I can't even chose what was my favorite. If you are ever in opportunity to visit festival of this kind, I would gladly recommend you to do it.

This year I went again. It was held from 1st of February to 15th of February, I guess because Lunar New Year also started this year on 1st of February, and traditional celebration also last 15 days. I am not sure where it was held in 2020 and 2021, because I didn't go then, but this year it was not on Kalemegdan again, and it was quite smaller, but with different figures. Maybe I write about it some other time.

Thanks for reading my post!