For many years we have kept an eye on the ice festival in Harbin, China, but oooh…the cold (-25) is just too much. This year we went for the small Ice Festival in Poznan – the Midieval beauty that once was the capital of Poland. Unfortunately no snow, but the festival is always held.

Poznan is a big city of about 1 miljon inhabitants, but we stayed in the old center with its typical architecture and beautifully decorated facades.

A festive feeling lit up the grand square, where they also had arranged a skating rink.

People of all ages enjoyed themselves – and treated the audience to lovely moves as well as spectacular falls…

The Christmas market was in full swing as well and we were still lucky with the weather. But, This was what we came for:

There were participants from all over the world, about 30 couples all in all. They circled the whole square. It was good to see great cooperation between people of different countries and nationalities. Iraq, Spain, Canada, the Philippines, Germany, Poland…The Ice Team worked hard to serve them all!

The artists were very skilled, and it was a treat to see them handling the ice. Some of them had made a sketch to follow, but some not. Their tools looked similar to those used for tree sculpting, but how do you work with a material like ice? We saw no big mistakes though, and the ice blocks seemed to tolerate almost any treatment…

The finished sculptures were fabulous works of art. Most of them rather small sized, but some the size of a grown human.

They were put on pedestals and lit up in different colours. We didn’t stay to see the winner, but these two were my favourites.

Art is a wonderful thing, it makes your heart glow and your mind grow. Thank you for walking with me, I hope you enjoyed!