I spend a lot of time looking for festivals that I don’t already have listed on my schedule page. I dig through Ohio travel sites, Ohio travel blogs, and I have many Google alerts set to find me every article where the words “Ohio” and “festival” are mentioned.

This last method alone takes a lot of weeding through.

But fortunately, once more and more people had found my blog, a strange phenomenon occurred…

…one of the festivals contacted me!

This is a rather spectacular thing because it doesn’t only help me share the information with other festival-goers – it helps me take advantage of it myself!

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With the promise of Romanian food (something that Julia and I have recently become familiar with), we headed out to Fairlawn…

…following the hand-crafted signs…

…and arrived at the “Presentation of Our Lord” Orthodox Church for the Primavara! Romanian Festival.

As we first walked inside, we entered a room where various gifts were sold…

…which included jewelry and Romanian merchandise.

There were also desserts here, but it was a bit premature to start nibbling on this so soon…

…although we promised ourselves that we would be back!

As we went beyond the desserts…

…we found ourselves in the heart of the festival.

Here, there was a little for everyone, including…

…an area for kids…

…a Chinese raffle for gamblers…

…some nice entertainment…

…and plenty of food.

With the help of the rather generous angelic volunteers who dished food on our plate…

…we enjoyed some wonderful mititei (minced meat rolls), mamaliga (polenta, cheese and sour cream), and stuffed cabbage while listening to the Romanian music in the background.

(Feel free to play the video above a second time for a stronger effect!)

Once we finished our meal, the thought of those desserts flashed in our minds, but we decided to burn some calories first by walking around…

…admiring the church…

…and even contemplating the jump house.

Eventually, we were ready to finish off the experience with something sweet, so we returned to the room that we started in…

…and the decision was a little more difficult than we expected…

But with the help of a little Ethiopian coffee to sharpen the senses…

…we selected something that put lasting smiles on our faces.