Surva festival in Pernik

There is an annual bulgarian festival in  winter and it's called "Surva", happening in a different time in the different bulgarian cities. On 31 january together with our Erasmuses we visited the one in the nearest town to the capital Sofia - Pernik.  

It usually lasts 3 days but we were part of it only for one. On the festival the main acting people are bulgarians called "kukeri", wearing masks in order to scare the evil forces.  With their masks they scare people as well so that they can be healthy all the new year long. Sometimes kukeri also hug and kiss visitors of the festival and in return people give them food and wine. During the festival every separate group of "kukeri", according to their quarter, shows their performance while dancing and carrying out different rituals in order to atract watchers.  We were really pleased we went to this event. We ate, drank wine, had a lot of fun and returned home happy because we have taken part of it. And we hope our Erasmuses felt a bit more involved in Bulgarian culture after this exciting day.