Brandishing clubs topped with hedgehog spikes, more than 40 shaggy sheepskin-cloaked monsters surrounded me, some 10 feet tall, all frenetically shaking their hips to clang ear-splitting cowbells chained to their waists. Wicked red tongues dangled down their furry chests and jumbo fowl feathers sprouted from their gargantuan ribbon-strewn heads.
Very surreally, I was in the teeny Slovenian village of Spuhlja, walking door-to-door with these mystical Kurents to carry out a powerful ancient tradition kindly rewarded with customary white wine spritzers at every home.
Scary but benevolent Kurents romp through the agricultural village of Spuhlja in northeastern Slovenia. (Photo by Norma Meyer)
The goal of this zany pagan rite is simple: Kurents (also called Kurenti) chase away the harsh winter and evil spirits while rushing in spring and prosperity. During their yearly appearance, Kurents are the iconic stars of Kurentovanje, the annual, extraordinary and biggest Shrovetide carnival in Slovenia, celebrated in its oldest town Ptuj (dating back to the Stone Age).
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Ptuj is Slovenia’s oldest city, with archeological evidence indicating it was inhabited during the Stone Age and later became a Roman stronghold. (Photo by Norma Meyer)
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Ptuj is Slovenia’s oldest city, with archeological evidence indicating it was inhabited during the Stone Age and later became a Roman stronghold. (Photo by Norma Meyer)
At February’s 11-day ethnographic explosion, hundreds of Kurents — along with swirling gypsies, whip-crackers, Krampus demons and folkloric figures — raucously paraded through Ptuj’s historic center, just a cobblestoned stroll from my hotel below a medieval castle. A pirate bartender in an outdoor booth sold Jagermeister shots in orange test tubes to costumed spectators, including a frog, banana, toothpaste and Minnie Mouse.
Kurents, shown here in Spuhlja, are the fuzzy beasts who bring good luck and bountiful harvests in the Ptuj region of Slovenia. (Photo by Norma Meyer)
Besides reveling in Ptuj’s nightly processions and two other local carnivals — one featuring scores of human Slovenian Barbies — I hoped to experience why UNESCO listed the Kurents’ door-to-door rounds as an Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2017. Simply put, they’re a vital “living expression” of this specific area’s unique culture passed down through generations.
Kurents make a mad dash on their way to another home during door-to-door rounds in Spuhlja, Slovenia. (Photo by Norma Meyer)
So a few miles from Ptuj, after being tipped off at a cafe by its owner (a Kurent not in costume yet) in Spuhlja, I zipped along the main road to his rural hamlet of 900 people. On this Friday the 13th, my driver-guide-translator Janez Kopar quickly found the 10:30 a.m. Kurents’ starting spot at a mint-green ranch house playing the Guns N’ Roses song, “Sweet Child O’ Mine” and across from four horses sauntering around a pasture. For now, the Kurents had their humongous head-masks off, as did the spooky pitchfork-wielding devils who routinely escorted them; both contingents included young kids and teens. Most of the hairy brigade didn’t speak English but they warmly welcomed me to join their countryside visits under one condition.
“If you come with us, you must drink,” a grinning Kurent said in Slovenian, handing me a pre-rounds spritzer.
Kurent Krazy
Imagine peering out your kitchen window and seeing this. These Kurents are doing house-to-house rounds in Spuhlja, Slovenia. (Photo by Norma Meyer)
To learn the lowdown, a couple days earlier I met in my Hotel Ptuj with Kurent honcho Ales Ivancic, president of the Federation of Kurenti Associations that oversees 26 different groups with a total of 1,200 fuzzy members.
Kurents travel from house to house, a tradition inscribed on UNESCO’s list of Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. (Photo by Norma Meyer)
What’s it like to wear a man-sized costume that can require 12 dead sheep, cost $3,000 and weigh 90 pounds? “It’s a sauna in there,” Ivancic said through my interpreter, adding the temperature inside the wooly shroud can reach 150 blazing degrees.
Although the Kurents’ origins may hark back to the 5th century or earlier, the first written mention of them was in 1829. Once upon a time, only bachelors could be Kurents, but these days you’ll find married men, their offspring, and a smattering of women underneath pelts.
All Kurents still receive handkerchiefs from women, a practice that symbolized courtship and admiration when only bachelors could be Kurents. (Photo by Norma Meyer)
“You have to remember people long ago were basically living off the earth, so whatever they plowed, that was what they had to eat,” Ivancic said. “The real message of the Kurents is happiness but also fertility of nature and fertility to have children who helped work the land.”
A Kurent greets a homeowner during door-to-door visits in Spuhlja, Slovenia. (Photo by Norma Meyer)
Two days later, under crisp blue skies in Spuhlja, I rambled off with my sprawling Kurent posse — which kinda looked like a battalion of Wookiees on steroids. We were accompanied by horned black or red devils, their masks wildly fringed with bushy lion-like manes of sheepskin and skeleton crossbones emblazoned on their jumpsuits’ backs. No one talks with their hefty headdresses on and they can barely see out of eye peepholes obscured by their straggly bangs. Kurents have no peripheral vision, so I was accidentally poked with hedgehog pricks a couple times.
The Kurents’ companions are devils, such as this one in Ptuj. (Photo by Norma Meyer)
Jaunting down pastoral paths, it was obvious Kurents invaded the ‘hood — their midriff bells deafeningly rang as they gyrated their unwieldy bodies en route to dramatic arrivals. At individual homes, they formed a circle or line and boisterously jumped, whirled, shimmied, and twerked, the brass cowbells intensely reverberating. Everywhere the residents excitedly waited outside, hugged their supernatural guests, and when head-masks came off and sweaty red faces emerged, they all schmoozed while refreshments flowed. Consider it a party in motion, with a baa baa bizarre flair.
A women brings out home-baked pastries for Kurents at her house in Spuhlja. (Photo by Norma Meyer)
In olden days, Kurents were offered pork sausages, eggs and wine at doorsteps, all to replenish their energy and court good luck. On my route, homeowners plied Kurents and devils with pork cutlets, chicken soup, French fries, chicken nuggets, home-baked apple strudel, home-brewed red and white wine, Slovenia’s Union-label beer, schnapps (which is Slovenia’s national drink), pork sausage sandwiches, salami, cheese, chocolate bars and of course spritzers (called spicer), occasionally served in shiny glass goblets. First, though, came out heaps of krofi, the traditional, insanely delicious fried doughnuts crammed with apricot jam. An estimated half-million krofi are sold during carnival in the Ptuj area (and I think I inhaled half of them).
A vendor in Ptuj sells krofi, the Slovenian jam-filled doughnuts gobbled up by the thousands during carnival time. (Photo by Norma Meyer)
After several door-to-door hours, a hulking Kurent told me in Slovenian, “You look thirsty,” and before I knew it a beaming elderly resident gifted me a bottle of his homemade pear brandy with the whole fruit stuck inside.
Behind the masks
Marko Klinc is one of the few creators of Kurent outfits, an exceptional form of art. (Photo by Norma Meyer)
Like a surgeon, Marko Klinc carefully hand-stitches Kurent costumes in his Spuhlja workshop, unattached beak-nosed Kurent faces weirdly staring from walls. Klinc is considered the premier artisan who creates the intricate ensembles, a venerable craft he mastered from his father and passed down to his own son. He delicately hand-paints every leather countenance, strings white beans as teeth, applies a straw mustache, and sometimes adds boar tusks. Kurents from the other side of the Drava River sport cow horns on their heads. “The faces may look alike but no two are identical,” Klinc said through my translator. A customer may require three fittings.
Kurent couturier Marko Klinc mends a sheepskin festival costume in his Spuhlja workshop. (Photo by Norma Meyer)
Obtaining the materials is the most challenging and “three-fourths of the job.” With sheepskins in short supply in Slovenia, Klinc travels to Bosnia, Scandinavia and neighboring Croatia to buy them. For the cowbells, he searches Austria, France and Italy.
Traditional ploughmen are known for digging the first furrow of fields and making a magic circle around villages. These characters are in Cirkulane. (Photo by Norma Meyer)
Kurents are the hallowed highlights of Kurentovanje, which began in 1960, but they have many carnival cronies — log-haulers, horse-like rusas, cockerels, fairies, ploughmen and others. I got up-close to a slew of funky costumes (and almost fell over trying on a Kurent suit) at Ptuj Castle’s hilltop museum overlooking the Drava. Afterward a museum gift shop employee insisted I taste a popular souvenir. “One of our national animals is the Carniolan bee,” she revealed, bestowing a snort of honey schnapps.
The rusa is a goofy carnival character bringing health and fertility for horses and other domestic animals. This entourage is doing a home visit in the Slovenia town of Cirkulane. (Photo by Norma Meyer)
A favorite character is the “old woman carrying the old man.” Essentially, a real male stands in a bottomless wicker basket with a female mannequin attached to the front as if she’s toting him.
The “old woman carrying the old man” is a staple of Shrovetide carnivals in Ptuj and surrounding areas. These couples are in the community of Cirkulane. (Photo by Norma Meyer.
“This is very very funny. It’s like you have a husband who goes to the pub and he’s drunk and you need to carry him home,” said local historian Marija Hernja Masten. She gave a Slovenian-language group tour of Ptuj’s medieval square, after dispensing sips of her homemade plum brandy to participants. Kurentovanje’s anointed prince Miro Kokol tagged along, decked out in 17th-century finery; when not a fake royal, he’s a train driver for Slovenian Railways.
Rambunctious Kurents walk into the bar at Gostilna Rozika in Ptuj. (Photo by Norma Meyer)
There’s that joke, “a guy walks into a bar…” Well, I was at a cozy tavern in Ptuj when a rowdy fully garbed bell-ringing band of Kurents walked (squeezed) into the bar, after having to duck their enormous heads under the door frame and not accidentally knock drinks from patrons. You ain’t see nothing like it. I had just devoured a bowl of sirovi struklji z jurcki (cheese dumplings with porcini mushrooms) at the same establishment, the Old World-style Gostilna Rozika. Another night another wacky scene unfolded; vivacious costumed gypsies from the just-finished parade packed the place as their musicians enthusiastically struck up folk tunes.
Different Kurent groups have staging hideouts (such as this one) in Ptuj where they don costumes before Kurentovanje events. (Photo by Norma Meyer)
That gypsy evening, local Denis Kokot perched at the bar dressed in his Kurent civvies (black pants and jacket, signature red polka dot neck bandana and knee-high red knit socks). Kokot seemed psyched for the next night, the hugest public parade of Kurents in Ptuj; he’d be among the estimated 800 behemoth beasts gathering outside the city’s Baroque onion-domed town tower and then romping toward the main plaza.
At Ptuj’s Kurentovanje carnival, some 800 Kurents gather outside the town’s medieval square a week before Ash Wednesday. (Photo by Norma Meyer)
“People around here basically live for this,” the 24-year-old explained. “My grandfather was a Kurent, my father did it and I’ve done it since I was 4. It is in our DNA.”
Surprise, surprise
Live Barbie dolls prepare for their carnival debut in Cirkulane, Slovenia. (Photo by Norma Meyer)
Beyond Ptuj’s festivities, I soaked up two daytime carnivals in nearby agricultural villages, all boasting Kurents, pipe-smoking gypsies and the traditional folksy cast. However, in Cirkulane, the procession segued into pop culture; human pink-clad blonde-wigged Barbie dolls stretched into infinity. Roller-skating Barbies, cowboy Barbies, tulle-frocked Barbies, princess Barbies. In their staging area, “Ken,” donning retro neon shorts and sun visor, distributed flutes of blueberry schnapps to the breathing adult dolls.
Black Death plague doctors join the fun at a carnival parade in Markovci, Slovenia. (Photo by Norma Meyer)
Elsewhere at Markovci’s parade, Black Death plague doctors attired in ebony robes, blood-sucking vials and pointy crow masks creepily ambled behind a rustic hearse. Earlier, a jovial gypsy knife sharpener pushed a wine barrel, wore Groucho Marx glasses and for some unknown reason, wanted to clean my faux suede boots.
Young Kurents take time out from official duties in Spuhlja to jump on a backyard trampoline. (Photo by Norma Meyer)
The weather presented a chill but spring teased. In fact, on my previous door-to-door rounds in Spuhlja, younger Kurents and devils frolicked in the homeowners’ grassy backyards.They gleefully bounced on a trampoline, glided on swings, petted a giant Lab named Bron, and laughingly balanced on a teeter totter. It seemed the Kurents had indeed banished winter.
Only exactly one week later, a massive snowstorm hit, closing schools and causing power outages.