The PicuMarZ Diary

The local village feast of Saint George in Qormi, celebrated during the last weekend of June, was always a special event form e from when I was 9 years of age, at that time a big fan of fireworks. Year after year from that age I always went to this feast either with friends in the decorated village full with joyful simple people or alone just to see the fireworks which are quite plentiful and nice for this feast. One of the best years was in 1996 when I went with my University friends (at the MLScourse) - we really laughed a lot.

This year was no exception either, and I and Malin went to enjoy ourselves during the weekend nights to this feast in the light cool breeze of end of June. First we went around the decorated streetsof the city and the visiting the large and richly decorated church dedicated to Saint George. The church is all lightedup, with plenty of golden and silver decorations and expensive textures. The chandelier is the most impressive of the decorations, followed by the silver and golden altar.

After that we went to meet Manwel and his girlfriend but he was late so instead I and Malin went to buy a large hot dog with chips from the many take away outlets around the streets. While eating, we walked towards the place where the aerial fireworks are displayed. We were a bit late but we only lost the initial small ones. The display of fireworkstook about nearly 2 hours, and it is not finished yet! We walked back to the central part of the village in a site known as the large Valley. here there was the second part of the display, that is the ground fireworks. This took another hour and this year it seemed that there was not a large number of people, hence it was more comfortable to watch. This took another hour or so. They were very spectacular especially the last and largest ones. At 1:30 in the morning it was all finished and we went back home, a couple of km away. I was delighted this day also because I was informed that Greece won the favourites France in the European football cup.

On Sunday we went again but mainly to watch the aerial fireworks from a lonely dark spot. I filmed the fireworks to make a dvd of the best fireworks of Malta. When the statue of saint George returns back to the church (about 10:30pm), after its traditional carrying around the main streets of the city, there will be a grand finale of fireworks and so then the feast comes to an end. I created a DVD of the fireworks of Malta which is for saleat 10 Euros. A full photogallery (over 50 pics) with descriptions can be seen on this site - please click here to go directly to the photogallery!