Who wears an IRA hat to Irish Fest?

Maintaining a travel and food blog can be quite difficult when the demands of a full time job prevent you from actually doing much traveling. So instead I let others bring the culture to me by way of Milwaukee's ethnic festivals. This weekend's offering was Irish Fest, billed as the "World's Largest Celebration of Irish Music and Culture". Take that Ireland!

I should probably disclose that in reality I have a fairly skeptical view of "cultural festivals", especially the major ones like Irish, Italian and German. It's hard to imagine boiling down these diverse cultures and historical landscapes into about 5 or 6 main ideas. I can only imagine what an American Festival abroad would look like. Everyone would be walking around wearing baseball caps, eating hamburgers, listening to big band music and dancing the electric slide. And then after doing that you really feel like you know and appreciate the real America. On second thought perhaps that's a bad example cause after doing all those things you more or less do know the real America.

But my complaints aside, they do make a pretty big deal of Irish Fest here in Milwaukee. I was pretty impressed that every stage on the Summerfest grounds was occupied, most but not entirely were populated with traditional Irish dance groups featuring about a dozen young girls and sometimes one lone awkward young boy. There were also some Irish folk musicians, and we even managed to catch a set from a group from Ireland. The friend I was there with and I both agreed that while Irish music might not be something you would want to listen to everyday, it sure does make for some great background music over a pint or five.

I didn't actually try any of the food there, but once again if you really want to experience the true food from a culture, a festival or fair is not the place to do it. I saw some Shepherds Pie from one of the stands but there didn't seem to be a whole lot else. In fact a lot of the food available seems to be there regardless of which ethnic festival was in town. I even witnessed a couple ordering from the Chinese stand, which seemed almost as ridiculous as wearing an IRA hat to Irish Fest. Then again I would've worn my Al Qaeda to Arab Fest but it was dirty.

We wandered around for a couple hours seeing some of the performances, looking at the kitschy festival trinkets you can purchase and laughing at all the people in stupid green T-shirts. I did enjoy a couple of delicious Irish Stouts while there (brewed by the traditional Irish-Wisconsin brewer O'Leinenkugel's, which is a big compliment considering I am not much of a fan of stouts.At the end of the day it was a nice experience to check out one of the festivals for which Milwaukee has become known. They are without a doubt hugely popular and by and large do about as good a job of promoting the culture as possible given the restraints. The main restraint being that as Americans we tend to prefer our culture nicely packaged in easy to digest portions and limited to areas we can comprehend and qualify. Wear green, play the fiddle, eat potatoes and dance without moving your arms. Throw in some booze and bam! You're in Ireland.