Carnival parade in my village

When we moved to South Limburg and heard that Maastricht was THE capital of carnival, we were initially more worried than excited.

I had not particularly enjoyed my first encounter with carnival in the Netherlands back in 1992. At the time, my Dutch husband and I lived above a pub in Hoogland, a village near Amersfoort in the centre of the country, and I remember how the stench of stale beer had permeated the air for weeks after the three days of madness.

Hoogland prided itself for having the “grootste carnavalsoptocht boven de rivieren” (the biggest carnival parade north of the Rhine and Meuse rivers) and I had never seen so many people in its narrow main street. But just about everyone looked drunk and behaved erratically.

The damage in the pub had been enormous: hundreds of broken beer glasses, soiled floors and carpets (I’ll not go into details) and all sorts of garbage all over the place. A man’s lavatory had even been completely torn off the wall.

We soon discovered however that the tradition of carnival in the south of the country was actually quite different from the unruliness we had witnessed in Hoogland. As I now understand it, the true spirit of carnival, according to my fellow Limburgers, has much more to do with humour than with getting drunk - although the two are still unseparable for many people.

For the past few years, we have preferred to take advantage of the carnival holidays to travel elsewhere, but this year we decided to stay here and to go and watch the carnival parade in our small village. We chose not to go to Maastricht, because we were worried that the city might be too crowded and the party too anonymous.

We did not regret it. It was simply wonderful.

Our children were delighted to see some school friends and started playing together while we waited for the parade on a wide street corner. Many people were dressed up - although not everyone - and there were smiles on everybody’s lips. We heard the band approaching and the children became very excited.

The parade was probably not as impressive as the one in Maastricht, but it had some very amusing and original acts, and some of the costumes were truly beautiful. But what we enjoyed the most was to recognise familiar faces under the various disguises and costumes, people from the local schools, the gym, or shops. Some of the acts represented local topics, such as the closure of our village’s train station booth, or national ones, such as the famous television programme “Boer zoekt vrouw” (Farmer seeks wife). The atmosphere was friendly and easy-going and there was a strong feeling of bondage.

After the parade, we did not join the big carnival party in the main square of the village. Instead we were invited for a cup of coffee and cakes with some friends and all the children continued playing together.

When we finally got back home, my husband and I both agreed that for us, this had been the best carnival ever!

By Sueli Brodin
Crossroads editor

Photographs by Sueli Brodin