Cross Border Festival of
Tradition and Customs (8-9 Nov, 2008)

The Business Incubator – Gotse Delchev uses modern marketing approaches to promote rich nature and cultural heritage of the cross-border region Gotse Delchev, Bulgaria and Strumitsa Macedonia. As a much more advanced organization the BI-GD transfer knowledge and experience towards the Macedonian partner who is just in the beginning of tourism development.
The Festival was a great event with a lot of activities:

• Art and crafts workshops called “The Wings of Imagination”: painting, mask producing, embroidering, knitting, ceramic and painted glass and so on. The children were just enchanted by the beauty of all the products
• Performance of attractive alive traditions and customs – a complex of variety of national costumes, colors, songs, dancing, artifacts, humor and fun. More than 360 performers from 6 municipalities took part in the Festival: 4 Bulgarian municipalities from 2 towns and 8 villages and 2 Macedonian municipalities. The age of performers varies from 3-year old girl to 75 –year granny.
• Presentations of the new cross-border tourist routes – both web-site and printed
• Culinary contest with delicious competition of 17 local restaurants and 15 amateur-cooks. They presented their mastership in local delicious temptations.
• Dancing party for official guests, tour operators and media representatives

On the second day:

• Alive attractions in the local museum – the melody of the cow bells, traditional still alive crafts, ethno fashion show of authentic costumes and tasting of a traditional sweet
• Tourist attraction in a village of Banichan
• Unique lunch prepared by the most famous cook in the region
• Romantic walk in an authentic village

I have never before seen so many smiles, colors, and variety at the same place.
The local, regional and national media could not stop shooting and interviewing the participants. The Festival was in the news of the 2 biggest national televisions, in the regional for South –West Bulgaria and local TVs as well as in the newspapers and in Internet e-media.
The official Bulgarian News Agency published a picture of the day from the Festival as well as a detailed article in their bulletin “European perspectives”.

In a word it was a genuine feast and everybody is satisfied.