How Serbs Celebrate St. Patrick’s Day?

A lot of drinking means a lot of fun in one special day. Not only that you can find festivals all around Ireland, but also all around the world. I wish I could participate some of these events, but sadly I live in Serbia and we don’t have Irish people here, we only have expensive Irish Pubs that nobody can afford (except Irish that we don’t have here). We also have one band Ortodox Celts, for some reason they think of themselves as Irish, even thou they have no real connection with Ireland, except all that drinking and playing music that resembles Irish drinking songs. We love this bend and for some reason feel connection to Irish people probably because of all that alcohol in both their and our lyrics. The most popular song of Ortodox Celts is the “Drinking Song”.

Here is the song video and lyrics as well:

DRINKING SONG

The clock started noon, I jumped out of bed,
I drank a cup of coffee and I walked out to the street,
It was boring sunny day, I was lookin’ for some fun,
I tried to find someone so I walked into a pub

There was Lucky playin’ banjo, on accordion was Jake,
We drank some beer and whiskey and pint of good old Celtic gin,
It was derby on TV, on Parkhead were a crowd,
We started watchin’ game with hope that our Celts will win

CHORUS
We are drinkin’ beer,
We are drinkin’ gin,
No matter what’s in (the)bottle,
We are drinkin’ everything

Then we took a short walk through the dirty streets,
And came back to the pub, for the game of darts,
Celtic beat the rangers, all the people sang & cheered,
We broke some bloody glasses, we were little bit of weird

That was ordinarily day in our smelly town,
We felt the smell of petrol and the dust between the toes,
Our eyes were chilly sparkled like a jewels in the crown,
Our hearts are always fill, it doesn’t matter where we go.

Most of the Serbs know very little about the origins of this saint but yet we still like to celebrate it. We celebrate anything, almost every God given festival where is alcohol and fun included you can count on us.

Another thing that Serbs and Irish have in common is the fact that favorite beverage here is beer and as a substitute of Irish Gin would be homemade Shljivovica (Serbian alcoholic drink that looks a like Gin). If you wish to celebrate St. Patrick ’s Day you should visit traditional Ortodox Celts’ concert and drink along with us. The band traditionally celebrates St. Patrick’s Day with a large concert in the synagogue of Novi Sad. Probably most of the people find it strange that St. Patrick’s Day is being celebrated in the synagogue, but that is not strange in Serbia. It is just another unusual feature and ironic contradiction that will remind you that you are on Balkans.

This is how some of us here celebrate this day. I hope that someday I will go and see the real thing in Ireland, but at this moment, this is good enough for me.

Copyrighted by Text Author: Jovan Maric @ SessionMagazine.com