Belgium bound

If you like feathers, funny costumes, parades and throwing oranges then Belgium is the place for you during the month of March. The beginning of March is Carnaval season, all the schools are on holidays for the various events taking place around the country, and every town has its own Carnaval Parade. The Flemish community takes its Carnaval processions VERY seriously, and each town goes to a huge amount of effort to create costumes and floats for its parade. Lots of them actually do the circuit and march in each other’s parade as we discovered “talking” (in broken Flemish/French) to a few old veterans who were sitting at the next table across from us after our ‘local’ parade. Our neighbouring suburb is Kraainem, which technically falls in Flanders and therefor has a serious procession, which we attended on a lovely sunny Saturday afternoon. It is amusing to note the level of enthusiasm and preparation for the floats corresponds somewhat with the language spoken by each group - some of the Francophone floats were less than magnifique.

Earlier that week we also experienced the largest procession in Belgium in the French town of Binche. Unlike their linguistic compatriots in Brussels, this Carnaval event is so massive that it has been heritage listed by UNESCO.
From dawn til dusk on the day of Carnaval hundreds of men aged from 5 to 75 fill the town square dressed up as Gilles de Binche, all in the same heritage costume, mask and clogs, to line the streets dancing and marching. During the afternoon they all don their massive ostrich feather hats and parade through the town throwing oranges to the crowd. If you catch an orange you are meant to take it home and keep it as a gift, rather than eat it. But so many oranges are thrown around the place that all the shops and houses along the main streets had erected fences in front of their windows to protect them from the citrus missiles being flung about. The whole town gets into the celebrations and there are Gilles aged from 6 to their 60’s proudly shuffling about the streets and throwing oranges to the thousands of onlookers. We even managed to meet the Belgian Prime Minister and shake his hand as he wandered around town chatting to the visitors (although he wasn’t dressed up as Gilles). I didn’t envy the town cleaners that would have a job-and-a-half on their hands during the following days, between the oranges and bag-fulls of confetti being thrown by every child in the street.