It’s Official: We’re Festival Hopping Through Europe This Summer.

Long before Coachella, Burning Man, Glastonbury, and even Lollapalooza, there were church festivals. Yes, my friends, church festivals.

On any given summer night in my hometown of Greensburg, Pennsylvania, you could find one. With its neon glow burning up the night, the church grounds bustled to a fever pitch around midway games and food carts. I’m not a religious man by any means and, surely, God wouldn’t have approved of our teenage mischief, but night after night– especially in late summer–these week-long festivals provided us with a lot of laughs.

It was on these sacred grounds where I first experienced food trucks and sat with nuns in large circus tents playing holy bingo games. It was also here, in the shadows of the tree-lined grass parking lots, where we’d hangout, as mix-tapes from our car speakers played the evening’s soundtrack.

We were lucky to have these festivals each summer. Not because they were unique to our town–I’m sure nearly every town in America has something similar–but because they were part of our fabric, showcasing our heritage through regional delights prepared by first generation grandmas, whose smiles reached back to their homelands in Italy, Poland, Slovakia, and beyond. And I realize now, after traveling beyond our borders, that this type of quirky, low-key festival is happening throughout the world and comes in many different forms, from music to heritage and food to arts. At their core, though, each festival is tied together by one common theme: the joy of life.

Truth be told, I haven’t thought about those church festivals for a long time. It was only when our good friend Kashyap Bhattacharya of Budget Traveller reached out to us about his new project, Must Love Festivals, that I began to look back on them with a new appreciation, as something more than just a nightly fix to teenage angst.

And then there was Must Love Festivals

Europe loves its festivals, and there is certainly no shortage of them in the summer. Unfortunately, it’s only a select few that really get global recognition. Well, we want to change that, and with Must Love Festivals this summer, that is exactly what we plan to do. You won’t see us covering the Running of the Bulls or La Tomatina or Glastonbury. What you will get is more than 40 festivals that have a whole lot of culture and good bit of quirk to them.

We’re working with an incredible group of digital storytellers on this ground-breaking blog project. This summer you’ll be able to find live updates and in-depth stories from: Michael Turtle at Time Travel Turtle, Frankie Thompson at As the Bird Flies, Peter Parkorr at Travel Unmasked, Kate McCulley of Adventurous Kate, Dylan Lowe at Travelling Editor, Sophie Collard at Sophie on Track, Abigail King at Inside The Travel Lab, Victoria Watts and Steve Kennedy at Bridges and Balloons, Sebastian Canaves-Börner of Off The Path, Mike Sowden of Fevered Mutterings and Alex Kovalenko and Ben Etco of Hejorama.

Additionally, we also have a great group of partners on board who are just as excited about the project as we are. Expedia.co.uk is our main sponsor, and we also have partnerships with Visit Finland, Rotterdam Festivals, Den Haag Marketing, German National Tourism Board, Slovenian Tourist Board, Austrian Tourism Board, Puglia Events and Malta Tourism Authority Marketing as well as Meininger Hotels and Generator Hostels.

All in all, the Must Love Festival team will be traveling to 11 European countries and experiencing more than 40 festivals. Beth and I will be attending festivals in Amsterdam, Puglia and Finland, which we’re super excited about!

We’ll have more details about the festivals we will be covering in the coming weeks, as we head to Europe on July 1. In the meantime, though, you can follow along with all the coverage with using #mustlovefestivals on your favorite social channel or by heading to the official site at http://mustlovesfestivals.com.

So, I’m curious, what’s the best festival you’ve ever been to?