„Pasienio fiesta“ (Frontier feast) becomes the biggest festival of the district

Up to 2004 in Lazdijai district there were a plenty of significant festivals and events, but there was not a special annual festival. In 2004 the festival„Pasienio fiesta“ (Frontier feast), organised by Lazdijai district and Seinai county became the biggest and most favourite festival of Lazdijai residents and tourists. The idea of the festival is to organise a two-day festival for the frontier residents and encourage the cultural collaboration between Lithuania and Poland.

The main theme of the festival was fishing, because in our district there are many lakes. It was decided that the first day of the festival – fishermen‘s day – will be organised by the Galadusis lake, which is located by the Lithuanian-Latvian border and it connects both countries. 5 years ago this place was especially attractive because it belonged to the frontier zone and to get there people needed special permissions.

Next day the festival took place in Lazdijai town park, where the best festival fishermen were awarded with Lazdijai district municipality mayor‘s cup, there also took place a craft fair, as well as the best Lazdijai district and Seinai county artistic collectives showed their performances, also the most popular musicians would participated in this festival. It was decided to organise the festival annually at the first weekend of June.

When „Pasienio fiestai“ (Frontier feast) became the biggest district festival, its organizers devoted much attention upon it. Every year they were seeking to surprise by interesting festival programmes, which would be interesting for both the spectators and participants of different age.

In 2004 in Lazdijai district museum there took placea closing of wood carvers‘ plener and the presentation of new sculptures in Lazdijai town. The exhibition „Mūsų senolių gyvenimas ir meilė“showing artistist‘ Jaroslav Bunck‘s from the Czech Republic wooden sculptures and gobelin was exhibited in the public library hall. The festival participants‘ group and spectators in thetown park were greeted by a huge number of salesmen, various entertainment was offered for children, there were lotteries, people could try cold beer, fish soup and sweets. In the park sport square there were youth street basketball and beach volleyball matches. Later our district and Seinai county artictic activity coectives presented their concert programmes, the youth was entertained by the singer Alanas Chošnau. The fireworks closed the event.