Carnaval 2014

Well, first things first. Last Friday Bo and I celebrated having been in Ireland for exactly one year! To stick to the clichés; the year went by unbelievably quickly and if I could re-live it I wouldn’t do anything different. Well, maybe I wouldn’t have eaten all those cookies before having my dinner just now, but well, that’s year 2 to be fair. But all in all a great first year, and delighted to have another two to go!

To celebrate in style I went to the Netherlands for the weekend. This may seem rather odd for a one year anniversary, and I must admit it wasn’t a wholly voluntary choice. As it was, Bo had invited four squeaking girlfriends from the Netherlands, who were to occupy the house for a decent 48 hours. One may understand my desire to escape said environment and thus I made sure I was across the sea in the Netherlands. I only found out a good while after booking my flights that this very weekend was the weekend of Carnaval, which is for many in the South of the Netherlands the biggest festival of the year. Admittedly I used to be very fond of these five days of partying, especially when I was 16 and single, yet the prospect of dressing up as… anything… and mingling with inebriated locals didn’t sound too appealing up front.

 How different it all worked out! I had the best time of my life!! The largest contributor no doubt was the get-together with about 3o friends and acquaintances that I hadn’t seen in a long while. We started off with dinner prepared by Anke at their place; a cosy evening filled with laughter and poor quality Carnaval music. As the supply of beer rapidly shrunk we set off towards town where we joined the crowds at the busy but not overly busy St Joris, while our group grew and grew as more people decided to join in. I must admit I did at times feel like being 16 again, dressed up as a monk, walking the streets I used to roam so often as a teenager, hanging out with the kids from back then. Rietje’s (Koen’s mother) comments of “you had better prepare Tony’s bed now rather than tonight” sounded like a déjà vu, and Henk (Koen’s father) eternalising another memorable moment through his camera had barely changed since then. The hangover the next morning also felt rather familiar, but unfortunately that isn’t something only from the distant past… Comparing the pictures from 12 years ago with the ones from 2014 however, some things seem to have changed a little... I'd say for the better! ;)