Outside the Book Nook: Perfectly Magical – Celebrating #20YearsofHarryPotter in VN

Why, hello there, world!

This should’ve been a Top Ten Tuesday post, but since I have nothing to present for this week’s prompt, I won’t be doing the meme and, instead, will rant about ‘experience’ at the latest HP celebration in Ho Chi Minh city’s book street that took place last weekend (May 13-14th), and was hosted by British Council, Tre Publishing House (the publishing house that currently issues all HP related stuff), and Hogwarts.vn, Vietnamese biggest HP fanbase.

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Probably I should give you a very short background of my life as a #Potterhead? I’ll try to make it less than 200 words lol

So I read Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone in Russian for the first time when I was 8 (a.k.a. 2001), which now makes 16 years since I’ve became a Potterhead. I’m, indeed, one of those people who impatiently waited for every single book (well, except for the last one), and read the newest part within maximum 2 days (yep, I managed to read Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, which you already know is the thickest book in the series, in 2 days). After I read them for the first time, I kept re-reading, and my parents kept joking about how I already memorised all books word by word, which is not really true, lol. I didn’t really follow up with the movies since my family couldn’t allow going to the cinemas, so I could watch them a few years later when my classmates gifted me a movie compilation DVD (at that time only for first 4 movies), plus I received PC games based on movies/books (I’m still loving the Prisoner of Azkaban one and the Quidditch World Cup one), so I played them (ok, I’m shamelessly lying, I only played the third one and the QWC). The final book in the series came out after I was forced to migrate back to Vietnam, and it took me three years before I could actually read it in Russian. And, as you can guess, that was just in time before the final 2 parts came out, which I’ve seen both at the cinemas.
To be honest, I never was involved with the fandom itself, meaning I didn’t participate in discussions, theories making, writing fanfiction or whatever creativity that was labelled as ‘fandom activity’. I was a very humble HP fan, without thoughts on my possible OTP, alternatives and etc. I just loved HP and loved the wizarding world JKR created. I’m still not accociating myself with HP fandom the way I accociate myself with Fullmetal Alchemist one in terms of crafting/braistorming stuff. I’m still just a person who re-reads books and re-watches movies; I think I only went to read fanfiction when I was interested in Dramione couple, but that also faded quickly, so I remained as a very humble HP fan. Of course, now I own some HP related stuff, but that’s probably all I do as a Potterhead.

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So, back to my experience at Perfectly Magical – Celebrating #20YearsofHarryPotter!

This celebration was a part of a European literature week held at the same book street I talked about long time ago, involving some interesting wizardry related activities.

I dressed up as a #ProudRavenclaw, with my blue robe and necktie, and a camera to capture everything you’ll see now below 🙂 Sorry for my shameless af selfie lol Also enjoy my new red hair!

But it was so hot that Saturday, and I had no other choice to wear a long-sleeved shirt to match with the tie (’cause I don’t have short-sleeved one), and I kept sweating like hell (my physiology can be compared to one of a male’s T_T). But anyways, it was fun!

So, at one side of the street, there were 2 photoshooting stands with Platform 9 & 3/4 wall and the Weasley’s flying car!

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Then, on the other side there was a small stage, where all public events were carried during the week. When I arrived, all winners of HP quiz were already announced and awarded, so no pictures from there 😦

Somewhere in between them, there were three tables side by side, full of HP related merchandise: replicas of wands (I personally got myself the Luna Lovegood one!) and other items appeared in movies, necklaces, bracelets, Hogwarts houses’ uniforms, few photobooks, t-shirts and mugs with funny HP prints – all presented by three different HP merch shops! I also got myself a tote bag you can see on one of those pictures in order to support the whole event.

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Behind the shopping stand, there was another fun installation of Quidditch stadium, with handmade rings for, obviously, a Quidditch game! People from Hogwarts.vn personally made everything, even decorated the balls so they looked like Quaffle! Strike 3 goals out of four, and you get the big prize! For each goal you anyways receive a bookmark (I haven’t taken a picture of that yet) with the House of your choice!

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Well, everything pretty much ended with that game, but look how many participants were there!

Very few of them got Quaffles through all three rings! I was too tired to stand in the line to try myself, and I kinda regret that, but still, I did my best in supporting those players!

And of course, as a grand finale for myself, I purchase the newest reissued edition of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire 🙂

So, I hope you weren’t bored with my countless off-topic posts that are nowhere to be related to books lol

I’m still struggling with both Wintersong and Pax, and I started an awesome sci-fi/dystopian retelling of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, so I don’t know how to manage my time to actually finish them, since I scheduled having a review for Wintersong to this Friday. I probably need to encourage myself to fulfill my plan.

Thanks for staying with me,

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