Vasteloavond: The Dutch Carnival

Hello, my name is Sílvia and I am from Brazil. Currently I live in Velden, a small village near Venlo, a town in the province Limburg. I came to Holland for a 10 months exchange program with Travel Active in August and so far, I have been having a great number of new experiences, being one of them 'Vasteloavond', the Dutch carnival.

When I first went to school in Holland, one of the first things people asked me was if I was going to stay until carnival. 'Are you staying for carnival? You should, it is so much fun!'. Some of them even asked me what I am going to wear. That is something that certainly doesn't happen in Brazil very often even though it was only September and carnival was months ahead. That shows how much the people here like carnival: most of them spend the whole year thinking about costumes and saving money

In contrast, the Dutch and the Brazilian carnival are very different. Apart from Rio and São Paulo, where they have the famous parades, Brazilian people don't normally wear costumes during carnival. The Dutch, however, go over the top. It was a lot of fun seeing the crazy outfits people wore: I had a great time with Amy Winehouse, a sailor, an angel and even a tiger. There was all kinds of costumes you could imagine, from a pirate to clowns and even Pikachu. Everyday most people wore different costumes and, if they were out of money or creativity, they simply put on a crazy and tacky outfit with an even more crazy and tacky make-up. On the last day, as it is the tradition in Venlo, people got dressed as the local farmers used to hundreds of years ago: the man with black suits, fancy hats and scarves, and the woman with fancy black dresses, hats, and, usually, fake fur scarves.

The music, of course, is also very different. In Brazil we have samba or other types of Brazilian music depending on what part of the country you are, and here they have their traditional music, which is not sang in Dutch, but in the local dialect, Limburgs. At first I felt a bit out of place, because I can't understand the dialect that sounds more like German than Dutch, but then the songs started being repeated and I could at least pretend I was singing along. However, even though both countries have very different 'carnival music', one thing they have in common is that the lyrics have no deeper meaning, only a catchy tune, and new ones are released every year.

I had a great time experiencing carnival in this unique way. As a Brazilian, I didn't think carnival could be fun anywhere outside my countries borders , but I was wrong. The Dutch carnival is a lot of fun even if you can't understand the dialect; just watching what crazy outfit people are wearing and wearing one yourself puts you in the mood.