02/13/10Maslenitsa Festival (The Goose Fights) - 2010
 It goes without saying that the Suzdal land is the best place where a Russian daring soul can display itself with all its wideness. And Shrovetide or Maslenitsa (Pancake week - a week before Lent) is the very time for it.
On February, 13 the Vladimir-Suzdal museum-reserve arranged a Pancake week festival on the territory of the Museum of wooden architecture in Suzdal.
A farewell-winter feast flourished among wooden peasant houses, windmills, wooden churches, wells and granaries.
  
Strong men, the members of the Knight's Spear military history club came out for fighting in single combat trying their strength on each other.
Everybody was called together for a merry round dance by the Radunitsa folk group. The balalaika strings began to ring and the legs started to dance themselves.
 A poet said: "Ah, how many amusements there are in Russia", and he was absolutely right. Peter the Great established geese fights in a spring morning in Moscow and nowadays real goose fights are organized in Suzdal. There were goose of different fighting breeds there and the choice fighters came from the town of Pavlovo, Nizhni Novgorod region.
Thousand of people came to celebrate the Russian Maslenitsa, to taste Russian pancakes and traditional Russian drinks - 'sbiten' and mead.
Foto of Maslenitsa Festival and Goose Fights in Suzdal
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