A fun time at the Pittsburgh Slovak Festival

Ever since our wonderful trip to Slovakia, Marty and I have enjoyed spending time hanging out with Slovaks, eating great Slovak food, listening to Slovak music and talking with many interesting individuals who share our love of this culture. This weekend added to the experience as we attended the Slovak festival held in the Cathedral of Learning at the University of Pittsburgh.  The festival is only four hours long, but packed with a variety of entertainment, and scrumptious food at a very reasonable price.  The photo of today's blog features Marty with Jozef Ivasko signing the CD that Marty purchased.  We had seen Jozef perform in New Jersey in September and we found ourselves amazed at his energy and his obvious love of Slovakia. When Jozef began his singing career, Slovakia was under communist rule.  His lyrics were considered to be controversial and his songs were banned by the communist government.  Jozef was forced to flee to Vienna so that he could pursue his singing career.

He is quite the entertainer, dressed in his native attire, still attempting to woo the audience, with the ladies loving every minute.   When his performance began, he spotted an elderly woman in a wheelchair who was dressed in her Slovak finery and obviously enjoying every minute of his singing.  She was 95 years old, and her daughter had placed her in the front row for the performance.  Knowing that her mother was quite happy watching the entertainment, the daughter sneaked off to take a peek at some of the beautiful Slovak items that were featured in the displays around the perimeter of the room. As Jozef began singing, he grabbed the elderly woman's wheelchair, and wheeled her  into the performance area with him.  She was having the time of her life, shaking her hands to the music, absolutely loving all of the attention.  In the meantime, I noticed that her daughter was making her way back to the spot where she had left her mother.  There was obvious  panic in her face as she scanned the audience looking for any sign of her mother.  I realized that this woman had no idea that her mother was on the floor with Jozef.  I caught her eye, and I pointed to the floor where her mother was still having a grand time singing along with Jozef.  The woman let out a huge sigh of relief, came over to me, shaking her head and said, "I thought to myself, 'Surely, no one would taken Mother!'" I thought I'd share the fun by inserting a video clip of this event.

You can find more videos and photos of the Slovak fun on my flickr site which is featured at the bottom of my blog.