I have just come back from an India Fest celebration here in town, and I’m stuffed.
As it happens with these events, no matter the ethnicity, a lot of income is generated from food sales. Topeka has around 130,000 people, and we have four food/cultural festivals during the year. There’s the India Fest, the Fiesta Mexicana, the German Fest and the Greek food festival.
I love them all. The India Fest has really authentic food from different regions, plus dancing, henna painting, a boutique, and a photo shop where you can get your picture taken in Indian style clothing. The Fiesta Mexicana has a carnival, sales booths, art, music from Hispanic performers, and of course food. The German fest, at Sacred Heart church, has dancing, German beer, and, ha ha, food. The Greek food fest has really good home style cooking, crafts, and one can tour the church, in which there are exhibits set up to show how the Orthodox worship.
Now in a big city one might not find the above celebrations of much note. But for a city of our size they are pretty cool.
What local food/cultural activities do you enjoy celebrating?
Local Greek festival was last week. The Feast of St. Joseph is a big day for the Portuguese, many local church festivals. We have Dragon Boat races and Italian food events. Seafood events are frequent in the summer time. And every summer we have our local town event which will feature many of the same food vendors from all the other activities.
In Milwaukee we have Summerfest, the worlds largest music festival. On the same grounds they also have African World Festival, Pridefest, Polish Fest, German Fest, Festa Italiana, Irish Fest, Mexican Fiesta and Indian Summer. Most of these span a weekend. Summerfest is nearly 2 weeks long.
Around the rest of the city we have Greek Fest, a number of Harley Davidson Rallies (including HUGE ones on 5 year anniversaries), Bastille Days (a French themed festival that blocks off a big chunk of downtown) and for some reason involves a marathon. Of course there’s all the regular random festivals town/church/Lake Front festivals, but we also have an Art Festival, a Strawberry festival and I think there’s a small chocolate festival out in the boonies somewhere.