Carnaval!

In the UK we celebrate Shrove Tuesday, better known as Pancake Day, the day preceding Ash Wednesday, the first day of Lent. In other words, we prepare ourselves for a period of giving something up by stuffing our face-holes with delicious sugary goodness.
In the southern Netherlands they celebrate a little differently. The dutchies drink copious amounts, dance to crazy songs about beer and women and have huge parades with bizarre floats, all while wearing ridiculous costumes. This is called Carnaval.
I have celebrated two Carnavals in my years with Arjan and am about to be dunked head-first into my third. We've been joined by three of our Brighton friends who have come to witness the madness and Arjan was so excited that he couldn't sleep the night before they arrived and got up extra early that morning.

The village I'm currently living in is tiny, but this Saturday it will be filled with thousands of people both watching and participating in a big parade, followed by hours of drinking. I will of course be photographing every second of this as proof and will throw together a post once I've regained the will to live on Sunday or Monday.
In preparation for all of this the village residents have been adorning their homes with flags, banners, balloons and posters in the Carnaval colours red, green and yellow. They flutter in the breeze as though restlessly waiting in the quiet before the storm. I went out and took a few pictures today, I'll maybe do a before and after of the devastation that will occur.

The house of this years elected "Prince Carnaval" and "Youth Prince" of the village

This creepy guy gives you an idea of what some of the parade floats will look like

The tent is going up, on Saturday this will be packed with drunken dutchies dressed to impress

Each village has a Carnaval animal, Meers's is the koelekop (tadpole) 

The butcher has gone all out 

These neighbours have 3 stone pillars in their front garden, purely to drape in the carnaval colours once a year.