Beautifully decorated with Bangladesh’s diverse cultural motifs, artifacts, flags, festoons, and displayable exportable, the pavilions were found crowded most of the time.
Along with cultural presentations, huge culinary diversities were also on display throughout the day. Ambassador Sheikh Mohammed Belal and his spouse were busy in receiving Ambassadors, diplomats as well as leading Dutch dignitaries in the Bangladesh pavilions.
The Embassy Festival in The Hague is an annual flagship cultural bonanza of the Netherlands, said the Bangladesh Embassy in The Hague.
This year, Bangladesh’s participation was expanded into two pavilions displaying glimpses of Bangladesh’s cultural and culinary diversity.
A total of 67 Embassies put up their pavilions turning The Hague into a huge montage of global cultural festival. This is the fourth successive time Bangladesh Pavilion was there in the mosaic of diverse diplomatic community in the Netherlands.
Thousands of people, along with family and friends, joined this Festival with fanfare and enthusiasm.
Local Municipal Council made this event almost a "must" visit item with round the year preparation and publicity.
As it was a sunny day, there was no end to the stream of visitors to this festival.
The highlight of the day was a musical rendering of a typical Bangladeshi wedding by a group of women from Bangladesh community.
Bangladesh musical group was among the selected few who were allowed to perform at the Embassy Festivals central stage.
The show was enjoyed by hundreds of people. By popular demand, Bangladesh’s musical group repeated their show few times to the rousing cheers from crowd.
Bangladesh pavilions were decorated in green-blue theme with nakshi-kantha and other traditional motifs. Bangladeshi food items were much in demand to both international visitors and expatriate Bangladeshis.
A pavilion was added this year to put on display Bangladeshi handicrafts, hand-embroidered items, jamdani saree, crafted clay items, brassware, jute and leather products and other traditional items typically made by the rural women etc.
The visitors appreciated the handicrafts and some of them picked up the items of their choice.
Some traditional Bangladeshi toys were distributed among children for free.
Clad in traditional saree and other accessories the young Bangladeshi students attracted huge attention.
Many people were seen requesting the children to pose for photos.
Bangladesh Ambassador to the Netherlands Sheikh Mohammed Belal and his spouse Dr Dilruba Nasrin were present at alternatively at both the pavilions throughout the day and welcomed the guests.
They also responded to various queries from the keen visitors and exchanged their views.
Embassy officials, along with members of their families, were also busy in attending the visitors.
Taking advantage of the crowd, Bangladesh pavilion distributed tourism related posters and brochures, pamphlets, booklets etc among the visitors highlighting ongoing development spree in the country as well as highlighting secular cultural tradition of Bangladesh.
Embassy festival is a very successful flagship event of the Municipality of the Hague where hundreds of thousands of visitors from all over the Netherlands and tourists from different part of the world participates.
Taking advantage of such a huge crowd, the Embassy made elaborate preparations to beam out Bangladesh’s image to both the visiting foreigners as well as to our expatriate community.
Overall, the visitors were found very keen to know about Bangladeshi culture and culinary diversity.
Proceeds from the pavilion shall go towards charity.
As the festival is extensively covered in the Dutch media, it is also an opportunity for Bangladesh to beam out its culture to the Dutch people, said the Embassy.