However, it would be an injustice to place the population at that number for the weekend I was there. That's because I was attending the Aalborg Carnival, the largest carnival in Northern Europe, or as I like to refer to it as: "Halloween on crack."
The amount of people in the small town that weekend was staggering; not only Danish, but from what I encountered several other countries as well.
For those uneducated in my recent Halloween attire, I have been wearing a cow costume for the last 3 holidays. To bask in the fullness of the costume, see pictures + Harry.
So it's only natural that I have the costume with me here in Denmark and likewise a perfect fit for this carnival atmosphere. There happened to be several other people with great taste like me who were also decked out in the black and white, see pictures as well.
Everything went down on Saturday and that called for a 6:30 am wake up call. Just enough time to make the bus at 7:30 and get to the pre-parade party for its 8:00 am start. Now Danes don't fool around with alcohol with it's early in the morning. A typical early morning drink in Denmark is a shot of a hard alcohol called 'Bitter.' Take a guess what it tastes like because I'd rather not relate its vileness. Imagine that at 8:00 am. Fortunately, someone concocted a homemade version of the popular schnapps 'Aalborg,' namesake of the carnival town. Honey, sugar and Aalborg combined to produce something that necessary wasn't tasty but at least was bearable. The party was a nice group of people who all brought things to contribute, including the typical breakfast bread of Danes, bread with some kind of seed on top. In addition to the typical butter or jam that tops this bread, the Danes also like to put thin slices of chocolate on top. This form of breakfast chocolate kills Cocopuffs. I'm quite proud to say I got pretty Danish as this party.
After all the general revalry at the party, we started walking to our starting point for the 10:30 am parade kick-off time. This isn't your grandmother's carnival parade though. Building off of the year's theme of 'Magic in the Air', students, starting from 3 different points in town, merged into a huge conglomeration of animals, space people, fairies, santa clauses and any other costume imaginable. As I said "Halloween on crack." It was me that people hung out their windows and fought for spots on the street to see. It's cool being the one to entertain the people and the people in this parade were entertaining to say the least. Entertaining as well as extremely clever. It really was a case of sensory overload. So many bright colors, so many different sounds combined for a tour de force on the downtown streets of Aalborg. The approx. 2 mile walk took about 2 hours. The parade spilled out into a couple parks downtown where we chilled for a while talking to other cows and fairies. There was a music festival in the park next to us but we chose not to attend because of money and time constraints. I felt no less a part of the experience though.
Regardless of the carnival it's a very nice city. I spent all of Friday just wandering around checking out the entire place. A very cozy place.
2 comments:
Looks and sounds like a fun time!! Not too sure about the shots...they seemed a bit sketchy :P Any vote on the most obscure costume???
You certainly have gotten a lot of mileage out of that cow costume. Only you would think to pack it for your trip abroad. No blanket or pillow but a cow costume..go figure
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