Carnival

Look at my cool carnival costume!

 You can also check out Gabby (I know you want to)

I want to tell you about the carnival, but I find it really difficult to put into words. There was a lot of drumming, a lot of dancing, a lot of lights, and as if to make those all seem terribly small, way more drinking.
As a consequence of the drinking, glasses were everywhere. Gabby and I had basically made a point of finding weirdly placed glasses to laugh at.
You can find pictures of the glasses in the carnival pictures album to the right, under Links.

I found out something that is surprising. I had no idea that carnaval is not a natively Dutch festival. It's pretty interesting. All the signs were in Dutch AND another language (Limburg perhaps? Dutch people, please correct me). Where the Dutch say "Maastricht" the Limburg people say "Meestrech."
I was a little afraid to sound dumb when I asked "Is that a different language?" because it didn't seem like the same language... but I don't speak Dutch.
I finally asked after having seen several fliers that said "Meestrech" and my curiosity made me ask.

At one bar these guys tried saying something to me in their native tongue. I said I don't speak Dutch. They said "Oh you're English?" I said yes, because I figured they meant "Oh, you speak English?" but I didn't really want to correct them because that would seem pompous. Then they asked me what city in England I was from- so, being too far in the hole already, I told them London.

I'm glad to know a bit of English culture because they went on to quiz me on a number of things about England and I had to keep up the facade. They were asking me which football club I follow (I told them Manchester), what part of London I live in, and what I think about England not using the Euro despite being part of the European Union.
Fortunately, I managed to not look like a fool... I think.

If you want to read about carnival from another more general check out Gabby's blog:
http://thedutchlanddiaries.blogspot.com/2011/03/carnaval-or-carnival.html
I feel like she covered the essence of carnaval very well.