Friday, December 9, 2011

The Christmas Fair

Yesterday Christine and a close friend organised the first Christmas Fair in the whole region. These types of fairs may be a major happening in some countries and especially in Germany, in Italy they haven't caught the Christmassy bug yet. Christine thought that she had to change all that and together with one of our very best Italian friends she went for it. The venue would be the small town of Casalino di Ligonchio, even higher up the mountains than where we live but a very cosy little place indeed. In the end there were seven stalls, but actually our stall counted for three because Christine sold her home-made buiscuits, I sold my special egg/honey brandy and we olso put a lot of Christmassy stuff on offer for a local shop, the owners of which couldn't be present unfortunately. 

For many days, Christine worked day and night making and decorating her special buiscuits: 


Here's our little stall:


In the afternoon quite a number of visitors showed up, not really by the hundreds but still a few dozen. Not bad for a first-time event in such a little town. Christine and her friend are determined to do better next year and make the Christmas Fair grow little by little. The comments were all very positive so that's what counts the most, isn't it?


Some more of her buiscuits... Christine was surprised at how much of them she eventually sold because she didn't want to sell them very cheaply after all the work she had put into them. But her work was obviously appreciated... :-)


And this is the special brandy I made, after an old, traditional, Flemish recipe. It's called "Advokaat" in Flemish and it's actually a kind of sweet and thick liquor which goes very well with fruit, cake, ice-cream, pancakes or other sweet dishes, or on its own of course. The local people loved it so much that at the end of the afternoon I was completely sold out! :-)


At the end of the day we were both exhausted, especially Christine because she had worked so hard for this. But we left with a deep sense of happiness because her efforts to bring some life into this region were appreciated a lot by everyone. It was fun, it was cosy and we did good trade, so what else should one wish for? Roll on next year!!!

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