Monday, December 1, 2008

And the prize goes to...

This was a goose-down plucking contest.




The ladies sat in teams of threes, in their festive matching dresses




and their fingers flew as they stripped the shafts from the downy feathers.





They grabbed more and more feathers to pull.





Soon, there were feathers everywhere, drifting about in the air and all over the floor.




Finished bags of down were taken up to the officials to be weighed and judged.





Eventually the results were in, and the winners were announced,

starting from seventeeth place (I think) and finishing off with the 1sts.

Everyone won a prize.




Here come the results!

Oooo! The suspense!




By the way, the guy with the blue cap on is a mind-bogglingly agile dancer.

Between polka-ing and doing deep knee-bendy kinds of dancing Polski lunges

he put on quite a show.



Watching him leaping reminded me to put in a pre-order for a wheelchair

for when my knees give out.

He also has a cousin living in Chicago.

Did I know the guy? He lives near Milwaukee Avenue.






After all the prizes were awarded,

one thousand photographs were taken

by each of the 250 people in the hall.



And after that, the eating and dancing began in earnest.




I'm sorry I can't tell you the name of this little town.

Because of course, the name went straight out of my head.

My head IS mostly full of fluff, you know.

But the memories will last a lifetime.



5 comments:

Christine said...

That looks like a lot of fun. I bet they make fantastic pillows and comforters. I would have been in trouble there. I am allergic to feathers. Makes me sad. I would love a feather pillow.

expateek said...

They DO make fantastic down products... in fact, they're famous for it in this part of Poland. Too bad about your allergies... guess it's a good thing you weren't there... you could have inhaled half a goose!

The town is named Rzeczyca, by the way. (I've only learned how to remember words with multiple z's and y's in the last two months.)

Waffle said...

And now, the jealousy, it is eating me up from the inside out. You went to a goose plucking competition! This is on a par with the happening involving 13 icelandic christmas brothers I went to last year.

expateek said...

See, we can envy each other now. I would love some Icelandic Christmas brothers... but 13 at once? Goodness, you are daring.

Pochyemu said...

Wow...I'm glad they make some things out of those feathers or else that'd be a lot of work for...nothing, really.

It's one of those things, I think, that teenagers from that village who live abroad are a bit embarassed about. Like, 'Oh, your mom won the cake walk? Yeah, my mom won the down plucking competition once...yeah, it is a bit weird, isn't it...'