World's Wackiest Festivals

1.El Colacho: the Baby-Jumping Festival (Spain)
In celebration of the Catholic festival of Corpus Christi, grown men leap over newborns, with full parental consent. Donning scary, vaguely Elvis-like costumes and wielding whips and truncheons, the men attempt to "cleanse" the babies of evil. Evidently, recklessly leaping over them is the best way to achieve this. The town has observed the strange practice (called El Colacho) since 1620, and any onlookers who seem to be in need of a quick exorcism are pulled into the event, as well -- so look normal, by God! And leave your babies with the sitter.


2.Up Helly-Aa: the Fire Festival (Shetland Islands)
A tribute to the islands' Viking Past, Up Helly-Aa ("End of the Holy Days"), the fire festivals are held in Shetland annually in the middle of winter to mark the end of the yule season. The festival involves a procession of up to a thousand guizers, and culminates with the burning of a 32-ft. replica of a Viking longship. Due to the often-flamboyant costumes and the large quantity of males dressing up as females, it has earned the joke name 'Transvestite Tuesday'.

3.The Monkey Buffet Festival (Thailand)
Every year, all of the province's approximately 600 monkeys are invited to eat fruits and vegetables during an annual feast held in honor of Rama, a hero of the Ramayana, who, it is said, rewarded his friend and ally, Hanuman the Monkey King, with the fiefdom of what is now Lopburi. Organizers of the annual monkey buffet use more than 3,000 kg of fruits and vegetables for the festival.

4.Holi: the Festival of Colors (India)
Holi, also called the Festival of Colours, is a popular Hindu spring festival observed in India, Guyana, and Nepal. On the second day, known as Dhulhendi, people spend the day throwing colored powder and water at each other. The spring season, during which the weather changes, is believed to cause viral fever and cold. Thus, the playful throwing of the colored powders has a medicinal significance: the colors are traditionally made of Neem, Kumkum, Haldi, Bilva, and other medicinal herbs prescribed by Ayurvedic doctors.


5. Cheese Rolling Festival (England)
Though it sounds benign (and kind of goofy), cheese-rolling is very dangerous. Running full-tilt down a very steep hill behind a madly spinning 7-pound wheel of cheese can be well-nigh lethal. In fact, police have attempted to ban the event, but participants have refused to observe the ban. Men and their cheese wheels can not be separated easily, evidently. So what happens during a cheese roll? Simple: the cheese is set to rolling, and racers zoom down the hill after the cheese. However, as the cheese can reach speeds of up to 70 mph, it rarely happens that someone catches the cheese. First to the bottom wins the cheese. Glorious.

6. Maslenitsa: free-for-all boxing match (Russia)
In Orthodox countries, the week before Lent is marked with a series of celebrations, including a free-for-all boxing match in which there are no rules. In centuries past, the fight ended only when the participates were covered with blood and bereft of clothes.

7. Tunarama: the Tuna Tossing Festival (Australia)
The Tunarama festival is held in Port Lincoln, on the tip of Eyre Peninsula, over the Australia Day (26 January) long weekend. When the festival began in 1962, it was intended to promote the emerging tuna fishing industry in Port Lincoln. Tuna fishing is now one of the town's biggest industries and Australia's largest tuna cannery is located there. The highlight of the festival is the tuna tossing competition. Ex-Olympic hammer thrower, Sean Carlin, holds the record for the longest toss at 37.23 metres set in 1998.

8. Roswell UFO Festival (USA)
The Roswell UFO Festival celebrates the anniversary of the "Roswell Incident," when a UFO was said to have crashed into military grounds nearby. Featuring experts, authors, researchers, and lecturers dissecting the infamous incident, the celebration will also sport an alien parade, an alien costume contest , and an alien hot air balloon ride.

9. La Tomatina (Spain)
In late August, thousands of people pelt each other with over 250 lbs. of tomatoes in a span of 60 minutes in an event modestly described as the world's largest tomato fight. Every year, over 30,000 tourists come to Bunyol for this festival. Rules of conduct keep the festivities from becoming a more dangerous brawl.

A YOUNG FEMALE RUSSIAN'S 2008

A young Russian woman's book about the pitfalls of living as an immigrant in Britain has become a surprise best-seller in Moscow ... and it paints a distinctly unflattering portrait of the natives.


Instead of finding London the city of her dreams, 23-year-old Olga Freer moans about the shopping hours, the public transport and the bad manners she encounters. In a litany of complaints about her adopted country, in her book The UK For Beginners she claims that Britons:

• Habitually scratch their bottoms in public places;

• Never remove the price stickers from the soles of their shoes;

• Fail to iron their clothes; and

• Are obsessed with TV programmes about buying and selling houses.

She says the country is full of "prudish, arrogant people who eat healthy food for breakfast – porridge or bacon and eggs. But in reality the nation suffers from obesity".

Some 60 per cent of the female population wear size 22 clothes, she says.

Do you agree with Olga's opinion of Britain? Tell us what you think in Reader Comments below

"But being overweight doesn't stop red-faced English women wearing minis and shaking their haunches at discos – some spectacle! It's a nation with girls, debauched girls to the last degree. The only sacred thing for them is Christmas, for which they wait 364 days a year."

Olga, who faked her CV to find work as a pizza-leaflet distributor, nightclub hostess and shop assistant in Oxford Street, is particularly damning about the "lazy" British working class.

"Every second immigrant achieves much more here than the ordinary Brits," she writes.

"The ordinary Brit, having a choice between education and a job on one hand, and unemployment on the other, would always prefer to live on the dole.

"Then all they have to do is send £10 notes through the mail as birthday presents for their various children who they don't see. The greed of these islanders was a real shock to me."

Olga came to Britain in 2002 when she was 18, and married a year later. She now has a son but the marriage ended in divorce, though she secured British citizenship.

She writes: "By settling in England I made my dream come true. The only plan I had since I was about 13 was to come here as an immigrant. I had no idea how it would work, but I knew that one day I'd become a UK citizen.

"I was so taken up with this idea that it never occurred to me that living in a foreign land, without friends, without mum's cooking and Latin American soap operas on Russian TV in the evenings, may not make me happy but rather vice versa.

"I'm not surprised any more how awful the free health service is. Like everybody else, I curse unreasonably high taxes. I've got accustomed to Indian cuisine, which seems to have replaced the traditional fish and chips that I used to dream about."

Olga, whose father was an official in the Ministry of Agriculture and mother a company financial director, says she is currently studying law at Westminster University and working in a London legal practice.

She told The Mail on Sunday last night: "Russian people are more heartful and soulful. I was bought up in the centre of Moscow, but here things are much worse.

"Here, for example, you switch on the water in the kitchen and the water in the bathroom goes off; here the central heating sometimes works and sometimes doesn't. At home it is always warm because the Government takes care of it for you.

"In Britain if it is your birthday, people send you a £10 or £20 note inside a card – like they can't be bothered with you.

"In Russia 99 per cent of people have been to university. Here you get on a bus and the way people talk, you can tell they aren't interested in anything other than football.

"I used to go to the theatre in Russia with my family a lot. But here I went once with my then in-laws and in the interval people were bringing in beer – were they there for the performance or a pint or what?"

She added: "Britain has a lot of exhibitions from abroad here, but English people don't seem to appreciate it. I go to museums or exhibitions twice a month and apart from a few Britons, most of the others are Chinese tourists."

Olga did concede one thing: "You can cook – I quite like Sunday roast dinners."

But she added quickly: "When you come home here, you open the fridge and what do you see? It's all supermarket food or half-cooked stuff. Do Brits ever cook from scratch? It is not because your society is incredibly advanced, it is because it is lazy.

Ironically, though, Olga is no fan of the British Government's immigration policy. She says: "I am against it. You should close your borders."