Carnival - Dutch Style

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A few weeks ago, Rob and I celebated Carnival. No, we did not go to Rio, or to New Orleans. They celbrate a uniquley Dutch variant of Carnival here. To me, it is a is a mixture of New Year's Rose Bowl Parade, Haloween and Rio Carnival. We were given a great guided tour and parade commentary by Rob's friends.



As the origins of Carnival are Catholic, it is mainly celbrated in the Catholic southern part of the Netherlands. Entire cities shut down between Saturday and Tuesday for a 3-4 day celebration.



THe bars fill each evening people in colorful, and often silly costumes. Its kind of like haloween, but the emphasis is much more on very colorful and silly rather than scary or gory. Some work for months on beautiful, but very bright, costumes and elaborate face masks. Others just put on a funny had or bright, colorful shirts. I saw one guy with a flower pot, complete with flower, tied to his head.



It is also kind of like the Rose Bowl parade. Each city holds a parade with floats and music. Within that city, local neighboords compete with each other for the best float. The town even changes its name during Carnival! Instead of flowers, the floats are made of paper mache, and mounted on truck beds and pulled by tractors. Each float is in psychadelic colors, and playing loud discotech music. Unlike the Rose Bowl, there are entries from as small as 1-2 guys, to the huge floats that take a over 100 people months to work on.