All the world’s a party: What my husband & I have learned as traveling nomads

The world is currently an extremely grim place. So — and I hope no one finds this insensitive — it struck me as a good time to write about something upbeat.

Like festivals and celebrations.

Related:

Trans people are magic. They should inspire us all to live more authentically.

“People have been taught to fear the very things that have the potential to set them free.”

Since my husband, Michael, and I started traveling full-time at the end of 2017, we’ve often found ourselves right in the middle of some pretty amazing ones.

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The first few years, it seemed downright uncanny. There were huge parties almost everywhere we went. What the hell was going on?

In our very first nomad destination, Miami, Florida, we lived near the edge of Little Havana, which was soon engulfed by something called the Calle Ocho Music Festival — a celebration of Cuban heritage that is said to be the largest street fair in the world, with a million or more visitors.

There was salsa on the tacos and also in the streets.

At our next stop, Malta, the country was pulling out all the stops to celebrate its being named a European Capital of Culture. You haven’t seen fireworks until you’ve seen them exploding over a city that is basically one massive medieval castle from the ramparts of another castle across the bay.

Our next destination, Matera, Italy, was already blowing our minds due to the presence of a vast, ancient city called the Sassi. But not long after we arrived, a local friend said, “You’re in luck! Festa della Bruna, our local festival, happens today.”

I was tired from traveling and didn’t want to go, but my friend insisted. “You must! To us, it’s more important than either Christmas or Easter.”

Of course, it ended up being an amazing experience — and the music, parades, food, fireworks, and massive banks of colorful lights were the least of it.

Every year, the town removes an ancient statue of the Virgin Mary from the cathedral and places it on a massive wagon made of papier–mâché, which is rolled all over town in a great procession. Then when evening comes, the statue is placed back in the church, the wagon is “deconsecrated” and rolled into Piazza Vittorio Veneto…

…where all the young men in town proceed to attack the wagon, tearing it completely apart and carrying the pieces away. The bigger the piece you end up with, the better your luck supposedly is for the upcoming year.

By the way, they take this “luck” thing very seriously. Word was that you could sell large pieces of the wagon for thousands of dollars on eBay. Who knew “luck” was transferrable?

And while it has traditionally been a male-only event, in 2018 — for the first time ever — a woman helped tear that wagon apart too.

The point is, the locals really get into it, it was completely and utterly bonkers, and it absolutely has to be seen to be believed.

This weird and wonderful festival dates to at least 1389, but that’s only the first written reference. Supposedly, Materans have been doing some version of this celebration even longer than that.

Why these specific rituals?

No one knows for sure, but one legend says that a farmer once stopped to pick up a young woman walking along the road. As they reached town, she revealed she was the Virgin Mary and that she wished to ride into the town every year on a decorated wagon. The farmer rushed to tell the bishop and clergy, but when they returned to the wagon, the Virgin had turned into the statue that is still paraded around town today.

In my mind, the real miracle of this festival is how they pack 20,000 people into the relatively small Piazza Vittorio Veneto.

In another legend, a local count promised to pay for a new wagon every year — and to make sure he kept his promise, the townsfolk began destroying the wagon at the end of every festival. Making the wagon out of papier–mâché is a more recent innovation, only a few hundred years old.

After a month in Matera — and another festival which included a concert inside a castle — Michael and I headed off to Bulgaria and a mountain town called Bankso…

…where we promptly found ourselves in the middle of a famous jazz festival, followed by several more festivals, including Bulgarian Independence Day.

After taking a cruise ship back to America for Christmas, we started off 2019 by heading off as nomads again — this time to Asia.

We soon discovered Songkran, a Thailand festival as bizarre and fantastic as the Festa della Bruna.

Songkran is the Thai New Year, and the country celebrates with a water-purification ritual — a massive, country-wide water fight! No one is safe from being completely drenched by hoses, super-soakers, or simply buckets of water — except Muslims since Songkran is a Buddhist tradition. The first time we celebrated Songkran on the southern island of Koh Lanta, we were told, “Some Muslims choose not to participate, so always wait for them to soak you first.”

As for tourists? Michael and I have long suspected that the Thai use Songkran to take out any of their lingering frustrations with visitors to their country by soaking us silly. And several Thai friends have since confirmed that this is exactly the case.

We hadn’t planned to be in the middle of any of these celebrations, and at this point in our travels, I turned to Michael and said, “Can you believe our luck? Everywhere we go in the world, we just happen to find ourselves in the middle of a huge party.”

And, weirdly, our luck continued.

In Hội An, Vietnam, there was a monthly festival of lanterns — and also a slightly less spectacular nightly one.

Living in the Swiss Alps for a month, we enjoyed both a local food festival and Swiss National Day.

We were in Tbilisi, Georgia, for Tbilisoba, an annual celebration of the city’s ancient heritage — and we made it to a great gay dance event called Horoom Nights.

Speaking of gay events, we also happened to find ourselves celebrating Pride in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina; Belgrade, Serbia; and Istanbul, Türkiye — where, admittedly, we got tear-gassed because such gatherings are currently illegal there.

We wandered our way into Christmas markets throughout Europe.

We were in the Netherlands for the fantastic arrival of Sinterklaas on a massive boat up the canals from “Spain.”

Sadly, we arrived in Mexico two days after Día de Muertos — the Day of the Dead.

But we’re currently in Sydney, Australia, which just had a massive party celebrating the fifty-year anniversary of their famous opera house.

Except for the Christmas markets in Vienna, we didn’t plan to be in town for any of these festivals.

But after six years of travel, I’ve finally had to accept the truth: Michael and I aren’t especially lucky.

No, the world just really, really likes a party. And the way the world so often is, can you blame us?

I do wonder why I didn’t notice all this celebrating back when I lived in the United States, before I started traveling full-time.

Maybe it stands out more now. All these foreign festivals and celebrations seem more interesting to me, in part because they’re unfamiliar — more “exotic.”

But, well, not to engage in my usual America-bashing, most of them are more interesting: much more culturally and geographically specific, much less generic and “mass-market.”

We’re also so often right in the middle of these festivals, even when we don’t plan to be.

Why is this?

I think it’s partly because, as nomads, we tend to stay in city centers, among locals, but away from major tourist hubs, which are primarily about tourism, not the true local culture.

But I think it’s also because human beings clearly have a deep-seated need to come together and cut loose — to have fun. And I think this wonderful need is reflected in cultures and traditions the world over.

I think that’s a really good thing to remember.

Especially in times like these.

Brent Hartinger is a screenwriter and author, and one-half of “Brent and Michael Are Going Places,” a couple of traveling gay digital nomads. Subscribe to their free travel newsletter here.