I haven’t experienced any major culture shock since I embarked on Dutch life one short week ago. There were a many little quirks here (circular shaped buttons to flush toilets) and there (gas stoves that need lighting) and inconveniences aplenty (the majority of stores stores don’t accept credit card), but nothing that really was jaw-droppingly baffling. Well actually, that last one was a little bit, but that was before I experienced the thing they call Carnival.
I had heard of Carnival in a Brazilian context and then again when one my roommates flew back to her native Spain this week to celebrate it. It seemed to me Carnival was a thing for temperate, relaxed countries full of bronzed party people. But it’s actually a worldwide celebration that happens in all different countries, even the Netherlands. The Québec Winter Carnival is a familiar Canadian culture touchstone but I never knew it was part of anything bigger.
I first learned of Carnival during a PowerPoint presentation during orientation on Friday. Saturday morning, my fellow j-schoolers hopped on a train to Maastricht, an old city at the southern most part of the country, and ended up in Eindhoven. What we found were entire cities filled with drunk Dutch people in ridiculous costumes listening to really cheesy traditional Dutch music. They don’t celebrate Hallowe’en here but this was bigger than any Hallowe’en celebration I’ve ever seen back home (yes, including Church Street.)
As we got off the train in Maastricht, a musical procession headed down the opposite platform. We followed the party across the bridge to the other half of the town. There people would be drinking in a square, dancing to Dutch music performed on stage by cheesy performers. We followed the local fashion and went to the grocery store to buy a case of beer and drink it in the square. Our second case of beer we took onto the train and drank on the ride to Einhoven. A train employee checked our tickets and barely seemed to notice our drinking. I don’t think drinking openly on the train is normally accepted but there probably wasn’t much point in trying to crack down. Plus, compared to the Dutch people we had seen on the trains, we were incredibly calm.
In Eindhoven, EVERYONE was in a costume and as people not dressed up we were questioned about it a lot. Their costumes weren’t the half-assed “Look I drew on some whiskers, put on ears and hey I’m a cat” type costumes. They were neon-coloured non-sensical costumes, the more garish, the better. Lots of people rented full out costumes like animal suits and nun’s habits (especially men.) It wasn’t just young people either; half of the people were middle-aged. In Canada I find that Hallowe’en costumes are mostly cop-outs for the illusion of participation and an excuse be hypersexual. The men and women here didn’t seem to concerned with trying to look hot, in fact, most of them looked really, really stupid. It really felt a lot more innocent and genuinely concerned with fun than image. Already I’ve begin to realize that Toronto (and Canada) is a very self-conscious place.
This young gentleman told me that this week is the only time he’s allowed to express his true self. I told him that for a people who have such a free and liberal reputation, they must be more repressed than they seem. A lot of Dutch people dressed up as people from other cultures (Mexicans, Asian geishas, Karate senseis, Scottish warriors, Ghengis Khan.) Some of the costumes were pretty culturally insensitive. There was a group of people dressed as Native Americans with face paint, fake braids and pan flutes. One even held a CD with a blank cover and asked me to buy her CD. Another had some crystal sugar in a plastic bag and a miniature can of Coca-Cola. I asked if them if they had ever met a Native person and they said no and their costumes were just a fantasy. They were pretty frank about their ignorance about Native people but didn’t believe it was offensive. They didn’t dress up to be mean-spirited but I thought the Dutch know better than believing in cartoonish stereotypes or at least P.C. enough to choose a safer costume.
Being the in Netherlands has left my sense of irony out of whack. Everyone I talked to knows they look ridiculous but they truly enjoy it. Maybe it’s just that simple, people just want to have fun. And that’s probably the hardest thing about this culture for me to come to terms with.
