NEWS
Prime Minister Alenka Bratušek in Kamnik: "National costumes are a reflection of our diversity, which is our valuable asset if we know how to understand and respect it"
Slovenian Prime Minister Alenka Bratušek today attended the conclusion of the 6th European Club Teams Cup in archery in Kamnik. In the afternoon, she also attended the procession of national costumes that took place within the National Costumes and Clothing Heritage Days festival in the old town centre of Kamnik for the forty-third time in a row. As the speaker of honour at the major tourist event in Kamnik, she said that the National Costumes and Clothing Heritage Days are "a peculiar walk through the time and a reflection of the society's different images that have left lasting traces, also making us reflect on the present moment. This event represents the tradition of rural regions, expressing the main notion of the Slovenian clothing culture identity".
The Prime Minister highlighted that national costumes equally represent the bourgeois culture, which in the rural clothing appearance of the second half of the nineteenth century looked for and found the expression of the Slovenian national identity. The Prime Minister also said that the present picturesque procession in Kamnik "lays out all our symbolic differences that constitute our valuable asset if we know how to accept, understand and respect it as such". She added that today's homage to heritage is above all the merit of those who, passing the tradition from generation to generation, ensured that "generations of Slovenians have reached for their best clothes with pride".
In the morning part of her visit to Kamnik, the Prime Minister attended the final competition of the 6th European Club Teams Cup in archery. After the competition, she congratulated all the participants, and particularly the Slovenian team, for winning the second place medals, and expressed her joy at archery's long tradition and its continuing activity. "In these days that are also marked with the Eurobasket event, I frequently think of you, sportsmen and sportswomen, and I would like to express my great respect for the extreme efforts and endeavours you invest in the attainment of excellent results. In this context, you can be role models for us politicians: persistence, eagerness and the unrelenting spirit of competition are what we all have to find in ourselves in these difficult times in order to be able to redirect our common problems to the right track".