Warning: Roses Ahead

Over the weekend, I had the opportunity to go to my country’s famous rose festival. On Saturday afternoon, I piled into the back of a rental car with a fellow teacher, Bethany, and one of my students, Kailey. Her mom, Jean drove and their guest, Jackie also came along. The three hour drive to the town where the festival took place was quite, punctuated by only a brief, yet heavy, rainstorm.

           

Upon arriving in K-lak, we decided the first order of business was to find a hotel (when you live overseas, trivial things like booking ahead of time fall by the way-side occasionally). We parked and began to walk around town, poking our head into anything that said “Hotel” out front. After trying one that was only pretending to be a hotel and one with no vacancy, we were a bit worried. Finally we decided to try the largest hotel in town, situated right on the town square.

They had two double rooms available. The lady at the desk told us that the rooms wouldn’t be quiet ones. I assumed because they were over the square, and since late restaurant goers are nothing new to us, we decided to chance the noisy square the take the hotel rooms.

After settling in a bit, we went exploring. We meandered up and down fun pedestrian streets packed with local artisan booths. A little over an hour of wandering and shopping later, Kailey and I were standing in the middle of square taking pictures.

We joined back with our group to make a decision about dinner and suddenly Bethany cried out “Look at the red berates!” Turning around, we saw that in the 45 seconds I hadn’t been in the square, an army had assembled.

Deciding to put off dinner to watch the army demonstration, we lined up with everyone else and waited.

And waited.

 

(Yes, they are holding foam swords)

And waited.

Finally, I went to get my jacket and a snack in the hotel room and I waited some more.

Eventually, we just decided to have dinner, which was rudely interrupted by explosions. Joining everyone else in the restaurant, we ran outside to see that some soldiers had assembled on top of our hotel and were firing rifles from the roof over the crowd, along with fireworks going off. I don’t have any pictures, but imagine a firing squad and the Fourth of July happening six stories directly over your head. Loud. And totally cool.

As far as I know, the most exciting thing those soldiers on the ground ever did was hold some torches.

Later in the evening, Bethany and I were getting settled in our hotel room. We wanted to go to bed early because our plan was to wake up at 4:00 a.m. to drive out and see rose picking in the fields. Yes, 4:00 a.m..

Trying to sleep, I started to realize that our hotel room was more than just “not quiet.” It was down-right loud. I put in my iPod and tried to go to sleep. But it didn’t work. Hours later the music and the DJing and the thudding were still going. I was beginning to question my existence.

A few minutes before my phone alarm went off at 3:45, I rolled out of bed and began getting ready, since I wasn’t asleep anyhow. Bethany and I went down to the lobby, more tired than one might usually be at 4:00 in the morning and as we got into the lift, realized that all of the terrible music we’d heard all night was coming from above us.

Our hotel had a dance club on the roof. Over our heads. At 4:00, partiers were just starting to stumble out and head home. And I was once again reminded sharply that I no longer live in America where sensible do not put night clubs on the top floors of hotels.

We left the hotel at 4:30 a.m., driving to a village, looking for rose-pickers. Eventually, we found a filed of roses, pulled over and waited for the action to begin.

 

Sunrise

 Here are the workers heading into the field

As the sun peeked over the mountains, workers started heading out into the kilometer long field, grabbing roses and putting them into their bags. We snuck out into the muddy, prickly fields to get some pictures.

 Continuing sunrise

We were obviously the only tourists in the field, even though we’d heard that the early morning rose picking was a popular destination. We attracted quite a bit of attention (mostly confused stares). However, the lady in charge of that field came over and met us and told us it was no problem for us to be there and even picked us all roses of our own!

The smell was divine. I’ve been given many rose items since I’ve been here but always thought the smell was fake. The flowers actually smell like the lotion and perfume in the stores here. It’s a very unique, sweet smell.

We headed back to the hotel for a couple more hours of attempted sleep (this time without the disco above us) while they were setting up the sound systems outside. At that point, I came to the conclusion that people who live in K-lak are vampires and don’t need sleep.

Breakfast (complete with rose yoghurt!) cheered me up a bit. After checking out, we drove to the rose museum where we were going to watch a demonstration of how they make all the rose products.

After paying 1.50 Euro to get in, we spent about two solid minutes in to the museum when the power completely went out. With the use of cell phones, we all made it back outside and decided to view the gardens until the power came back on. There were definitely worth a walk through.

 

We waited a long time, but the power never came back on. I spent a solid five minutes with Bethany practicing how to ask for a refund from the ticket lady. Refunds are one of those foreign concepts here, but I felt like I at least ought to ask. I walked over to her and before I could even get the “Excuse me” out of my mouth she asked “You want your money back?” All that language practice for nothing. I did get my money back, though!

We then walked through another rose field, picking as we felt like. We congregated back at the car to make it back to the main part of town for the parade to start. The problem was that our car was totally blocked in by tour busses and police cars.

Even though I think I have had the least amount of language classes, I got nominated team captain and went to ask some of the police officers when we could move our car. He rattled off a whole lot of information; the only bit of which I understood was, “You have to wait.”

Sitting in the hot car, grumbling about police officers, Bethany spoke out in wisdom and said, “I bet this is one of those times that if we understood the culture we would understand exactly why we have to wait.”

I didn’t really believe her.

Until I saw the Rose Queen.

Yep, the Rose Queen. She was newly crowned and just coming out of the gardens, escorted by her entourage. They got into the police cars and started driving away. We slipped in behind them as a tour bus blocked the road. A police officer actually thought we were part of the Rose Queen’s team, waiving us through part of the closed road (we were looking rather lovely and queenly).

We gave up being apart of the Rose Court and found a parking spot. The group split up to wander a bit more and Bethany and I wormed our way up to the curb for front row seats to the parade. Arguably the strangest and coolest parade ever. 

The Rose Queen:

 Some ladies dressed in traditional garb:

 A children's traditional music group

 I have no idea:

 Nope. Don't get this one either.

Once the parade was over, we headed out of town to see a famous monument. We ended up getting side tracked at this beautiful church.

And then made it to our destination where we went to the top of the world. Or at least that’s what it felt like.

We got a wee bit turned around on the way home. Jackie wanted to stay in a different village so I played team captain again, asking various people where a hotel was and where our city was. Eventually, later than expected, we made it home, safe and sound.

I must say the whole weekend was everything that I love and hate about my life here all in one. All of the weirdness and unique cultural experiences are amazing. The discos on the top floors of hotels: not so much.