INTERNATIONAL FESTIVALS: BLOOMSDAY FESTIVAL 

Summer is a great opportunity to learn, when there’s more free time. What people usually do is learn languages or other cultures.

Because of that, MyHOSTpitality wants you to know about the different festivities and cultural festivals are celebrated in different places.

In today’s post we’ll be writing about the Bloomsday Festival that is celebrated in the Irish capital, Dublin. You can take advantage of this festival to learn about the Irish culture and learn languages from non-English speakers from all over the world who go to this festival as literature followers.

History of Bloomsday

The Bloomsday Festival is based on the James Joyce novel, Ulises. This novel is placed on June 16, 1904 and for this reason the festival is celebrated every 16^th of June.

The name of the festival comes after the protagonist of the story, Leopold Bloom. The novel is based on the life and thoughts of Leopold Bloom and some other characters, both fictional and real. This novel is considered to be the best English bookseller of the twentieth century and the festival is celebrated because of the great repercussion the novel had in English culture at a time.

It is believed that Joyce chose the date June 16, 1904 because on that day he met his wife, however this is only an assumption.

Joyce published his novel in 1922, since then the 16^th of June was named the Bloomsday. In the year 1929, the first celebration took place because of 25^th anniversary of the date marked in the novel. The festival is celebrated since 1954, the 50^th anniversary of the date.

Bloomsday celebration

This celebration is very typical in the Irish capital. The city of Dublin gets filled with people who want to recreate the life of Leopold Bloom in the novel. However, Dublin is not the only place where the festival is celebrated, you can find it in places like New York or Santa Maria (Brazil).

People who attend the festival are usually dressed up as the characters from the novel, with the clothing and the typical style from the epoch where the plot of the novel is placed. The characteristic accessories are the straw hat, the black bowler hat or the round glasses.

The way to celebrate this festival consists on attending the performances and readings or even visiting the iconic places that appear in the novel. Therefore, recreating some of the scenes as if you were part of the story. There’s also a popular walk that ends where Leopold Bloom usually had lunch, named Davy Byrnes.

People usually eat the same thing than the characters from the story. It’s very typical to have Leopold Bloom’s meal for breakfast: liver and fried kidneys along with the typical Irish breakfast. Not only breakfast is served, during the day they also recreate the same meals that are mentioned in the novel: bacon sandwich with bread and honey, the traditional seedcake, Gorgonzola cheese sandwich, a glass of Borgoña wine and the Banbury pie.

Since 1994, the institution in charge of managing this festival is the James Joyce Centre. This institution is a museum and a cultural centre which offers exhibitions, courses, lectures and tours during the year.

How to enjoy the Bloomsday Festival with MyHOSTpitality?

To fully enjoy this festival you should dress up as the characters that appear in James Joyce’s novel, attend the cultural events and be part of the festival as if you were a truly Irish. Above all, you should know a little bit about the novel, it’s not necessary to read the whole novel to enjoy this festival but at least it is recommended to know its history and the history of Dublin in 1904.

The most important thing is to find a place to stay during the festival days. Don’t you worry, MyHOSTpitality is here to help you. If what you are looking for is meet different people from other countries and learn their native language, experienced the festival and have fun with its people, join our community. If you are lucky to speak another language, find a host family that can accommodate you in exchange of your linguistic skills. Make your own language exchange, choose the family that better adapts to your needs.

Here is the link with all the programming, have a look and go for it

http://bloomsdayfestival.ie/programme/

Some other posts you could find interesting are:

English culture – Aprils fool’s day

Spanish and English holly week