Ever wonder what's happening around the world? This weekly column for Storeboard.com will give you a global perspective of interesting, entertaining, and newsworthy happenings around the planet Earth! Here's what's happening continent by continent this week -- Monday, Oct. 28 through Sunday, Nov. 3, 2013:
Africa: People from all over the world, including Americans and Europeans, will participate in the Cape Town International Kite Festival on Saturday, Nov. 2 and Sunday, Nov. 3. Cape Town Active reports that the festival in the Cape Town suburb of Muizenberg, South Africa, is Africa’s largest kite festival. Spectators can see kites that look like cartoon characters, Chinese dragons and giant octopi. The festival also includes children’s kite-flying contests, kite-making workshops, and stunt kite riding, as well as musical performances and children’s entertainment.
Antarctica: The continent with zero permanent residents and a few thousand research scientists will host a concert by the heavy metal rock band Metallica, the band announced on Oct. 25. The Sydney (Australia) Morning Herald (I don’t think they have newspapers in Antarctica) said the concert will be the second ever on the continent, but the first was by scientists entertaining 17 people in 2007 so this will really be the first. The concert will be on Dec. 8 and will be INDOORS. The audience will be people taking a cruise from Tierra del Fuego, a chain of islands of about 135,000 people that is partly in Argentina and partly in Chile.
Asia: NFL Europe had teams in England, Germany, the Netherlands, and Spain from 1991 to 2007, but did you know that the NFL also promotes football in China? For nine consecutive Sundays, Beijing’s Beihang University Stadium is the site of flag football games. The season ends on Nov. 3 with the city league’s semifinals at 11 a.m. and 12:30 p.m., the all-star game at 2 p.m., and the city championship at 3:30 p.m. The public can also participate in activities around the field, including flag football games, Nike clinics that teach football skills, a chance to put on football equipment, and the NFL Tailgate Zone's food offerings.
Australia: Melbourne Wine Week 2013 features activities all over the Melbourne metropolitan area from Friday, Oct. 25 through Friday, Nov. 1. The activities include classes, fairs, festivals, lectures, workshops, and wine tasting competitions at bars, pubs and other venues. “The idea is to champion the award-winning wines from the 2013 Royal Melbourne Wine Awards," according to TimeOut Melbourne. The Melbourne metropolitan area has more than 4.2 million people, which is the second the most populous in the nation behind Sydney (Canberra is the capital), so lots of wine will be consumed.
Europe: Jazz began in the early 1900s in African-American communities in the southern part of the United States, but a “distinct European style of jazz” began in France in 1934, according to Wikipedia. Today, jazz is so popular in Europe that jazzfests.net lists dozens of jazz festivals in Europe. This coming week alone, there are international jazz festivals in Prague (Oct. 16-Nov. 7) and Barcelona (Oct. 19-Dec. 1) as well as local festivals in France, Germany, Poland, Italy, Austria, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Georgia, Finland, the United Kingdom, and Slovakia.
North America: The first Chicago Humanities Festival was held in 1990. It lasted one day and featured a speech by playwright Arthur Miller, who probably had more fun as Marilyn Monroe’s husband than as a writer. The 2013 Chicago Humanities Festival includes 66 cultural, artistic and educational events from Nov. 1 through Nov. 10. Most of the events cost $8 in advance and $13 at the door. The website lists all the events and says that “each festival brings together novelists, scholars, musicians, archaeologists, historians, artists, performers, playwrights, theologians, poets, architects, policy makers, and others.”
South America: The Dallas Cowboys sounds right because cowboys are by definition animal herders who tend cattle in North America. The Santiago Cowboys doesn’t sound right, but rodeo has been Chile’s national sport since 1962. In 2004, more people attended rodeos than soccer games in Chile. Rodeos in Chile are different than American rodeos. They consist of two huasos or huasas (female huasos) who must wear traditional dresses mounted on horses earning points for how well they corral calves. There are approximately 20 rodeos throughout Chile on Saturday, Nov. 2, and Sunday, Nov. 3.
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