14: Cerknica // A Parade of Fools
The curious characters of Cerknica carnival // © Olja Reven / shutterstock
Despite my proclivity for a pivo, 10am felt like an auspiciously early start. There was no fear of getting too drunk, too quickly. That was almost the point. Will arrived with a few cans of Laško and we had a bit of time before the bus, so two plus two equals 10am Laško.
Being a little tipsy wasn’t going to be an issue, but having to spend an hour on a bus most certainly was. How in the blue hell was I going to keep a lid on my bladder in such a situation? Needles to say, I wasn’t able to, and it all became rather perilous. Luckily for me, I wasn’t the only carnival-goer on the bus with that issue, and the driver agreed to stop in Rakek, in order to stop his bus turning into a latrine. What followed was the longest pee of my entire life, a seemingly endless stream of digested Laško that had me worried that I was going to have to stay in Rakek forever. No offence, Rakek, but no thanks.
We made it to Cerknica without further incident, ready to drink more beer and enjoy one of the most curious festivals on the planet.
Cerknica’s carnival isn’t the oldest in Slovenia, it isn’t the most famous, it isn’t the biggest, but it has garnered itself something of a reputation as one of the best. It began to develop in earnest in the years following World War II, in the excitement and optimism of Yugoslavia’s second coming, as the annual tradition of driving away the evil spirits of winter was jazzed up with costumes, masquerades and masses of drinking. The party traditionally ran from Fat Thursday all the way through to Ash Wednesday, although I was only planning on partaking from Saturday morning until Saturday evening. Lightweight.
For the duration of the madness, the small town of Cerknica ceases to go by that name. It becomes Butale, home of the Butalci, the famous fools conjured up over a series of stories by Fran Milčinski, a group of characters that would be nightmarish if they weren’t so preposterous. It all starts with Uršula the witch, a hag-like creation whose sawing in half kicks off the festivities. It doesn’t get any less ridiculous.
We arrived in Cerknica in time for the parade and took up a handy space on the barrier, ready for the parade of mentalists that were about to swan down the centre of Cerknica, although that should obviously be the centre of Butale. There was Jezerko the waterman, the Pike, the dragon, a massive frog, and there was the mayor, a position won through having the biggest head in the town. No small feat, I assure you.
I was particularly fond of the police, another group of bulbous-headed madmen, a group who seemed particularly happy to have capture poor Cefizelj, although it is a bit of a stretch to use the word ‘poor’ when describing bandits. I wasn’t about to defend the vagrant, I didn’t know his story after all, but I was willing to guess that he had been given a shoddy hand from the get-go.
The costumes weren’t confined to the streets. Will and I had both decided to dress up for the occasion, choosing complex and maligned characters who had experienced their own hardships before reaching an end that may or may not be considered happy. I was Job, albeit a modern interpretation of the man, a ghoulish man at his wit’s end with little lust for life after losing his wealth, his kids and his health. In the Bible, he has his riches returned to him many times over, but at Cerknica’s carnival, he had turned to the bottle. Well, the can, in this instance. Will dressed as Dexter, from the TV show ‘Dexter’.
Two half-assed costumes, you can be sure about that, but fitting in their own way. The get-ups were simple enough to allow us to be comfortable in our imbibing, which was all part of the script as the Butalci marauded down the centre of Cerknica.
Drenaks on Lake Cerknica // © zkbld / shutterstock
My first visit to Cerknica couldn’t have been much more different. It was the same time of year, maybe a little earlier, and I was in town to research and write up content for another In Your Pocket guide, this time singing the virtues of the so-called Green Karst region, the Zeleni Kras. A town of fewer than 5,000 people, Cerknica still managed to represent one of the largest settlements in the guide, behind Postojna and Ilirska Bistrica but ahead of Loška Dolina and my beloved Bloke.
The municipality is best known for its eponymous lake, a natural curiosity that disappears from time to time. This is Europe’s largest period body of water (for the completists out there), a stunning expanse of water (sometimes) that confused everyone until ol’ Valvasor came up with an explanation in the 17th century, that being the existence of a subterranean network of caves and sinkholes that occasionally funnel water away from the surface. I had been to the excellent museum that tells the story of the lake, as well as a local man keeping alive the tradition of building drevaks, curved boats made out of fir tree wood.
Lake Cerknica is also the setting for a typically tragic love story, the tale of star-crossed lovers on opposite sides of the lake who are faced with duelling families and disapproval at every step. The bloke could only take the hand of the lady if he travelled to her by boat, which doesn’t sound so hard until you realise that the lake was actually a field at the time. Not to worry, as our hero found Jezerko, the waterman wandering the streets of 21st century Cerknica (well, Butale), and the two made a deal that allowed the lake to spring forth. The King (as in the father of the girl) was a chump, however, and he had already promised his daughter to another bloke. Long story short, the man drowned, the girl threw herself off the castle walls. Why don’t these stories ever end well?
I’m not going to claim that those exact thoughts were spinning around my mind as I opened my 7th can of Laško, faced with the macabre image of an actual parade of hideous fools with jumbo-sized heads. There was dancing to be done.
