The world comes to celebrate in Lapta

By Ralph Kratzer

The highlight of the annual Lapta Tourism Festival, which takes place for the seventh time this year, as always is the Folk Dance and Music Festival. We informed you a few days ago about the programme (to remember click here).

It has become a nice custom that the municipality (Belediye) of Lapta, as the host, welcomes the participating dance groups from around the world, invited guests and members of the media to a festive dinner before the official opening of the dance festival.

So I made my way to Lapta on Wednesday, 18th June, together with my girlfriend.

This year the site of the event was the newly opened Hotel Le Chateau Lambousa, a dignified ambience for the evening.

The dancers of the festival came, in addition to the host country North Cyprus, from Turkey, Russia, Serbia and Chile.

Fuat Namsoy, Lapta´s mayor, opened the festive evening with a speech. Among those present were again the tireless staff of Lapta Belediye, Berke Ertopaloğlu and Mustafa Aktug, who put so much time and effort into organizing the Lapta Tourism Festival with its countless different events each year.

After gifts had been exchanged between hosts and guests, the dinner began.

The representatives of the media got their own table. At our table we were together with Margaret Sheard and Chris Elliott, members of the Foreign Residents in the TRNC (TFR) and operators of the very popular website cyprusscene.com, as well as a reporter and camera crew of the newspaper Cyprus Today and Sergei Eletskikh, jointly responsible for the Russian „Soyuz“ magazine, accompanied by his charming wife. Sergej is also, for some time, a member of the TFR.

There was lots of laughter and chat, exchanging of experiences and information, and we enjoyed the abundant dinner from the kitchen of the first class hotel.

After all guests on site had strengthened themselves, dancing and singing by the young folk dancers from all over the world began. Participants of all countries danced together a Serbian folk dance, dances from the South Pacific (also a version of the famous Haka dance of the Maori – see video below) and Turkish folk dance. Both the dancers themselves as the guests present were thrilled.

Once again, I have to express my highest appreciation to the Lapta Belediye for the organization of the 7^th Tourism Festival 2014 and my thanks go as well to the Hotel Le Chateau Lambousa for the dignified setting of the event.

Until next year, I’m already looking forward to it!

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