Carnival is here

Religious history divides the Netherlands into two regions. The northern part of the country is Dutch Reformed, while the south (where we live) is Catholic. Carnival is celebrated in the Catholic region as the last hurrah before the fasting of Lent begins on Ash Wednesday. Although most Dutch are not religious and they won’t fast during Lent, they sure know how to party for Carnival. Kids have the whole week off school, and many businesses are closed for at least Monday and Tuesday.

The Carnival season actually began on November 11, when the “prince” of each town and his council were elected. Every town takes on a different name for Carnival. Deurne becomes De Peelstrekers (the Peat Stretch, I think), and our neighborhood (St. Joseph Parish) becomes De Heikneuters (the Cozy Heath). Our prince (Henk the Second) lives a few streets away from us, and his house and entire street have been decorated for months.
Carnival itself began in Deurne on Saturday, with a celebration in the central market square. The city hall was decorated with seven banners, representing the city and the six villages or neighborhoods within the city jurisdiction.
First, seven small marching bands (one for each neighborhood) appeared from several of the restaurants in the square. Then the mayor addressed the crowd from the upper window of the city hall, before handing over the keys to the city to the Carnival princes. During Carnival, the normal government is ignored and the city is ruled by foolishness and fun.

At the appointed time, each of the seven princes appeared at the window to receive their neighborhood’s key from the mayor. Each prince was accompanied by his wife (a princess) as well as a couple youth princes or princesses. After the handing over of the key, the corresponding neighborhood’s marching band played music for the royal party to dance to.
I was impressed that one prince played his trumpet to lead his own band. I suppose he likes to multi-task.
After all seven keys had been handed out, the Prince of De Peelstrekers led the entire crowd in a conga-line dance through town to the new cultural center, where the party would continue.
The rest of the weekend was filled with parades, since each of the seven neighborhoods held its own.
My favorite float featured Hulk Hogan on an American pickup truck.
Most floats played extremely loud dance music and carried a group of young adults drinking beer. A lot of these floats were in multiple parades, and several of them seemed to spend the weekend joyriding through town blaring loud music. I lost count of how many floats passed our house while I was home.

Besides floats, there were also dancers dressed in Dutch costumes,
A fire truck with a picture of the prince,
And each neighborhood had a special float to carry the prince and his court.
Carnival continues with parties, activities for children, ridiculous costumes for everyone, and lots of beer-drinking at the local pubs. It will all end Tuesday night when a doll (representing I’m not sure what) will be burned on the market square at midnight, and then everyone will eat salted herring to welcome in Lent.

On Wednesday, supposedly our quiet little town goes back to normal!

Delft and Den Haag

On Saturday we took a train trip to Delft and Den Haag (The Hague). Delft is a cute little Dutch city with several old churches and a central market square. (The Netherlands has a LOT of cute little Dutch cities with churches and markets.) It is the home of the painter Vermeer, and his “View of Delft” is one of his most famous works. We arrived in Delft in the morning before the town woke up, so it seemed very sunny and peaceful.

Like many Dutch towns in the western part of the country, Delft has many canals. Our home (Deurne) is in the east, and slightly above sea level, with no canals.
The central market square has a large, ornate town hall.
Delft is famous for production of “Delftware,” blue and white china that was first made in the 16th century. The market square is surrounded by gift shops selling Delftware, and offering Dutch photo ops for tourists.
One of the churches in town leans two meters to the side, which is impressive.
In the afternoon, we hopped back on the train and went to Den Haag. Den Haag is the seat of Dutch government, and houses many international entities too. We saw the international Peace Palace where international war criminals are tried, but it was not open for visitors.

We enjoyed walking around the city and seeing both historic and modern government buildings. Our favorite stop was the Mauritshuis, an art museum that focuses on the Golden Age of Dutch art.
It has three famous Vermeer works, I lost count of how many Rembrandt paintings I saw, and there were works from many other artists too. For some reason, Josh is obsessed with the paintings showing educational cadaver dissections.
(Josh carries the camera and takes most of the photos. When I download our photos to add to our blog, I’m sometimes dismayed to find what we have pictures of! I also find that photos of me outnumber photos of him about four to one…)

After a full day, we had supper and snoozed on the train back to Deurne.