Festivals

EDINBURGH FRINGE FESTIVAL - SCOTLAND
The Edinburgh Fringe Festival is a huge feast for all lovers of the performing arts. This year's Fringe (2003) - held between August 3 and 25 - is the biggest ever, presenting 21,594 performances of 1541 shows by 668 companies in 207 venues. Its forte is unpredictability. The Fringe carries artistic licence to its ultimate conclusion. Anyone can perform, which makes this a venue for many who should never be allowed on stage as well as a few brilliant acts that would never get off the ground anywhere else. Expect nonstop action, riotous behaviour and undergraduate toilet humour by the bucketful. Prepare to be surprised!

PALIO - Siena, ITALY
Held on July 2 and August 16 each year, Palio is a lunatic horse race in which jockeys dressed in medieval costume ride bareback three times around Siena's main square. It looks like something out of a fairytale, magic and medieval, but like a lot of fairytales there is a lot of hidden horror. The race lasts less than two frenzied minutes, but anything goes during Palio, and bribery, horse doping and violence are all part of the event's Machiavellian skulduggery. In the recent past, jockeys have been thrown into barriers and killed, drugged horses have collided and broken legs and, as a matter of course, the winning jockey and his faction go mad with joy, singing and parading noisily through the streets all night.

LA TOMATINA - Buol, SPAIN
On the last Wednesday of August each year in the town of Buol in eastern Spain, at 11am precisely, war breaks out. The weapon is the humble tomato. There are no sides. Everyone is your enemy. Only tomatoes are allowed, and you have to squash them before throwing. In the course of the battle, about 20,000 people will hurl a total of 40,000 kilos of ripe tomatoes. The madness concludes when the crowd surges down to the river to remove the mess. While the tomato fight grabs the headlines, it is only one part of a week-long festival of music, food and fireworks.

RUNNING OF THE BULLS - Pamplona, SPAIN
Ancient Basque traditions get a shot of testosterone for the virile Festival of San Fermin, which takes place from July 7 to 14, every year. The main event is concentrated into a couple of action-packed minutes, when six bulls charge for 800 metres through the streets into the city's bullring, harassed by a crowd of several thousand for whom the event has become a macho rite of passage. Despite taped horns, the bulls can and do inflict fatal injuries. Beneath the headlines, the Basque traditions of singing, dancing and bullfighting are all celebrated with riotous enthusiasm.

ST PATRICK'S DAY - Dublin, IRELAND
Got a taste for green beer, served warm? How about corned beef and cabbage? While half the world celebrates St Patrick's Day on March 17, there's nothing quite like the festivities that bring a smile to Irish eyes on the banks of the Liffey. Established by the government of Ireland in 1995, Dublin's St Patrick's festival has expanded to become a week-long celebration of Irish culture, including music, dancing, street theatre, ceilidhs, craft, Gaelic language events and general mayhem. In 2004, St Patrick's Festival will run from March 12 to 17.

MONTREUX JAZZ - SWITZERLAND
In the gorgeous Swiss lakeside city of Montreux, this is the premier event on the world jazz calendar, although it goes well beyond what purists would consider jazz. For the 2003 event, held between July 4 and 19, performers included George Benson, Natalie Cole, Radiohead, Jethro Tull, Bonnie Raitt, Joao Gilberto, Simply Red, the Pretenders, Van Morrison and Jamiroquai, but the result of this stylistic hybridisation is often sensational one-off pairings. As well as performances, there are also lots of workshops and competitions, although even the Swiss have never quite been able to marshal these maverick spirits and make things begin on time.

CARNIVAL - Venice, ITALY
There is nothing on Earth quite like the revelry that turns Venice's alleys, canals, squares and hidden corners into one giant, festive stage. Held over the 10 days preceding Ash Wednesday, Carnival is a time to let the imagination run riot. Concerts, theatre and dance all feature on the festival program, but above all, it's the chance to transform yourself into the character of your dreams that excites. This is one of the few places where you'll look underdressed wearing Jean-Paul Gaultier, so do as the locals do and rent a costume and mask for the occasion and get yourself on the guest list for some of the Carnival balls.

SALZBURG FESTIVAL - AUSTRIA
This is a feast for lovers of highbrow culture, a celebration of opera, drama and music of the highest calibre, set against the splendid baroque backdrop of Salzburg. Artistic director of the 2003 festival, which runs from July 26 to August 31, is composer/conductor Peter Ruzicka. Among the highlights is a cycle of Mozart operas, a reappraisal of the work of Richard Strauss, performances of the music of Austrian composers exiled by the Nazi regime and a new opera by Hans Werner Henze. Expect virtuoso performances from some of the greatest singers, conductors, orchestras and actors working today.

OKTOBERFEST - Munich, GERMANY
They love to drink in Bavaria, and when they drink, they love to eat. Given sufficient quantities of both, the average Bavarian feels an irresistible urge to sing. Add sunny weather, leather shorts, tents with humungous quantities of beer and waitresses who can heft three full steins in each granite hand and you have Oktoberfest. Not surprisingly perhaps, Oktoberfest is a major pilgrimage for many young Australians, for whom the rallying point is the Hofbrau beer tent. As a matter of national pride, the Hofbrau tent boasts the most incidents of spontaneous clothing removal.

OBERAMMERGAU - Passion Play, GERMANY
When the Black Plague swept through Europe in the mid-1600s, the farmers in this mountain village in southern Bavaria asked God to spare them. In return, they vowed that a drama depicting Christ's trial and crucifixion would be performed by the villagers forever after. The plague bypassed the village, and every decade the local farmers and shepherds grow their hair and beards, don biblical robes and Roman uniforms and practise their lines amid scenery more suited to The Sound Of Music. The result is spellbinding; a dramatic performance like no other. The next performance of the eight-hour play takes place five times weekly over a four month period in 2010.