Serb Fest

I took the girls to the Serb Festival. I'd looked it up online and clicked on a link to directions. But whoever it was at the site (not St. George's, some list of community activities I found) had the wrong address.

Well, it was the right address until a few years ago. Back when I was still married, I tried to take the girls to St. George's one time so they could see the beauty of an Orthodox liturgy. I went to St. Theodore's Russian Orthodox Church in high school, not out of religious conviction but because it was beautiful and I liked the music. I even sang in the choir, which scandalized at least one of the faithful, that a pagan who made no bones about his paganism would be singing in the church choir. But the congregation was good people, and I hard second hand that the parish priest had told the openly scandalized woman that 'This is a church, not a country club.'

So anyway, Orthodox churches being small and rare, they'd sometimes get together for a service, especially if the Bishop was in town or something. So I've been to at least one service at Holy Cross Russian Orthodox and at St. George's Serbian Orthodox. Never done the Greek, I understand they sit down instead of standing to chant for an hour and a half.



Anyway, the time I took the girls to St. Georges, we lasted about two minutes with Mo's vocalizing 'Look at the Christmas!' and all that. Then we were locked in the parking lot and had to wait through the service for someone to move their car so we could leave.



Anyway, we went to 1119 Lowell Ave in KCK, where the map said to go, where I remembered the church being, and there wasn't a soul in sight.

A few phone calls to find someone online or with a newspaper and I found out St. George's built a new church 20 miles closer to home. So we back-tracked to it.

I'm told they sold the old facility to an Ethiopian Orthodox congregation, be curious to see how that differs. The Orthodox never did embrace Latin the way the Romans did, so they've always done the liturgy in the vernacular. At St. George's, at least 20 years ago when I went, that mean the priest and choir were doing it in Slovanic, St. George's being a mainly immigrant Serbian church. St. Theodore's, while officially Russian, had hardly any Russians in its congregation, being a hodge podge of Syrian, Polish, Greek, and I don't know what mixed into a large group of former Episcopalians who founded the congregation when they felt the Church of England had gone too far astray. So St. Theodore's was an English service. I think Holy Cross did it in Russian, but I could be wrong.



Ethiopian, though. I don't even know what language that ends up being.

So anyway, we got to the Serb Festival at last, and mostly it's food. Same as the Ethnic Engorgement Festival, but mono-ethnic. I bought a couple of samples, a Cevapcici and a Raznjici, neither of which I can pronounce even vaguely. I know the first one has the accent on the second syllable, and I know it's basically like a hamburger in the shape of a little smokey. The Raznjici is a pork kebob. I couldn't get the girls to take even a test bite of either.



The thing I like about the Ethnic Engorgement Festival is my daughters get to refuse to try a wide variety of foods. The thing I don't get about their fear of Serb food is how American Serb food is. I mean, this is basically just grilled meat, food a Midwesterner would recognize. This isn't some out-there curry with 15 spices they haven't heard of or whatever.

Serb teens dancing to Serb music from Chixulub on Vimeo.

I wish I'd kept the camera going longer on the dancers in the video. No ethnic clothing, and it appeared to be spontaneous, this group of four teenagers who knew the dance that went with this particular song. It builds from what I got on video, and was really pretty cool.