Limburg, I Love You But You're Bringing Me Down

This weekend was spent castle-side as it was the start of a 3-day festival that happens every year at around this time in the Southern part of the Netherlands called CARNIVAL. Celebrationally speaking, it can be closely compared to the French/American Mardi Gras, but much longer and with less enjoyable music. There is much celebrating in the streets, each day and night moving the crowd to a different major city in Limburg and nearby areas. There is a "Prince of Carnival" elected every year who gets to be the champ and wear a sick hat with a bunch of really long feathers. Most local Limburgers close their businesses, wear green, yellow and red, and get wholly hammered in the middle of the day, for three days. Needless to say, this festival is fairly overwhelming.

On Friday (the day before Carnival) I joined about 30 of my peers for a day trip to the town of Maastricht, the southernmost major city in the Netherlands, guided by an Art Historian/professor here at the Castle: Rob Duckers. "The Duke," as he is informally known, turned out to be the man. Here's why: after an uneasy wake up call of 8:30 and having a surprisingly short bus ride to Maastricht, Rob Duckers stated that the most important thing we needed to do was to get some coffee and pastries for ouselves, then proceeded to take us to what he believed to be the best coffee house in Maastricht and covered everyone's bill. It was awesome. Rob then took us into the historical city of Maastricht, a city which claims to be the second oldest in the Netherlands (younger than Nijmagan, an ancient roman city). We spent most of our time in two churches within the city, the first of which was kind of cool, the second of which had a large reliquary and art collection that is currently curated by none other than Rob Duckers. The Duke gave us a very special tour of the place, not only going into great detail about the art and architectural design of the building itself but (literally) unlocking several locked doors to show us special crypts, towers, and emperor's rooms that I imagine the typical Maastrichtian passerby would not be able to see.

And of course, in true Duke fashion, Rob bought us all a beer at the end of his tour. After that we were free to roam around the city and explore it for ourselves. Even in the awful weather that the Netherlands has been stricken with as of late, Maastricht was still a great town and certainly a place I plan to visit again before my trip is up.

Saturday I traveled with a group of castle peers to the nearby city of Venlo to partake in the Carnival festivities taking place there. This day is pretty much a blur. As I mentioned above, patrons of this crazy festival enjoy to get incredibly drunk in the middle of the day, so... when in Rome. There were a lot of people in the streets dressed up in crazy costumes and having a great time. At one point we stumbled upon some more of that awful Carnival music, this time being played by a live band, so that was kind of cool (but only kind of). Unfortunately I have no pictures from that day, I brought the ol' film camera out there, so perhaps I'll scan some and put them up in a few weeks.

Carnival was very interesting indeed, however when it came down to it I was just another uninformed American barging in on (presumably) hundreds of years of tradition. Yes, it's a good time to get hammered in the middle of the day, but it's not like I or any of my peers had any idea what we were celebrating or how one was expected to go about doing so. One in a situation such as this can do one of two things: either look on and observe as an uninformed bystander (which can be awkward for the locals) or pretend to participate by dancing around and singing gibberish (which I imagine could be perceived as offensive). In the end, I did a little of both. Neither felt very fulfilling. This weekend certainly provided the most culture shock I've experienced thus far in my trip.

After a riled and drunken weekend, Sunday became a day for recuperation and meditation. And more illicit substances.

Europe, you kind of freaked me out this weekend. I think you're score's at about 40. David B. Weaver, however, is at... 41 (?!?!?!?!)