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<\/a>Scooters on parade<\/p><\/div>\n
One of the best things about Carnaval is that no one goes out without a costume, or pakje. <\/em>For several days, the city is awash with color, and the streets fill up with multicolored varieties on eighteenth century dress, and\/or oversized animals. \u00a0The young sometimes dabble in contemporary pop cultural references, as well: \u00a0I saw a great Big Lebowski walking around on Friday night. \u00a0As with Sinterklaas festivities, Carnaval feesters<\/em> have been known to go out in blackface, which adds to the general feeling that one is experiencing something that has been happening routinely since the Middle Ages.<\/p>\n This girl even had color-coordinated fake eyelashes!<\/p><\/div>\n The fact that there is such a vast difference between the Carnaval festivities in the South (massive) and in the North (nonexistent) is one of the remaining indications of the religious split between the Protestant north and the Catholic south in this country. \u00a0Many people in Limburg get the week of Carnaval off of work, and the celebrations are so beloved that when they end on Tuesday night, at midnight, many people weep drunkenly at Carnaval’s passing. \u00a0As an outsider, even a half-Dutch outsider, it’s difficult to relate to the spirit of eternal fun on the street, but it is equal parts alienating and contagious. \u00a0The streets are often so clogged with people that walking from point A to point B is like walking through a crowded nightclub at 2 o’clock in the afternoon. \u00a0There are literally countless harmonietjes<\/em>, or musical ensembles playing brass instruments — one outside every bar, with sheet music clipped to their instruments. \u00a0Beer flows in rivulets between the cobblestones. \u00a0It is a great inauguration into lente<\/em> — in Dutch, the word for both Lent and Spring.<\/p>\n<\/a>