From flowers thrown at crowds to treasure hunts to huge lanterns… discover different carnival traditions from all corners of the European continent!

Basle, Switzerland > Darkness and drums

Three days of fun with brass bands, costumes, masks and confetti start on 6 March this year. ‘Morgenstraich’ is a procession but not quite as you would expect. The Basel carnival begins later than most, as it follows the ‘old’ church-calendar. The first procession of the three-day carnival starts at 4 o’clock on Monday morning. Street lamps are turned off, the only thing you hear are the drums and the piccolo players, and the only thing you see are the huge canvas lanterns, which depict events of the last year. No need to worry about the cold, the traditional ‘Mehlsuppe’ (flour-soup) and ‘Zwiebelwähe’ (onion quiches) are served at local restaurants, which open their doors for this special event.

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Nice, France > Elegance, colour, and plenty of flowers

This year the carnival in Nice takes place from 11 to 28 February. As every year, there is a theme. This year, the ‘roi des dupes’ (King of Dupes) makes an appearance and will be seen in the floats, parties and costumes. The biggest tradition in Nice is the ‘batailles des fleurs’ or the flower parade. It is a unique theatrical tradition, but has many followers such as the ‘Tournament of Roses’ in Pasadena, USA. Twenty floats have 2 days to be decorated using fresh flowers. Roses, irises, marguerites, and of course mimosas- the symbol of Nice- are all used. And 90 percent of the flowers used in the carnival are locally produced. Over 80,000 flowers are thrown by costumed locals into the eager-eyed crowds, who are busy watching the magical display of colour. Although this is only one aspect of the carnival, the elegant charm of this parade is a welcomed contrast to the rather satirical street-parade.

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Patras, Greece > Treasure hunt on motorbikes?

Patras, portual city of the Peloponneson, started with the traditional carnival fanfare on the 17 January, and will heat up the atmosphere for six weeks. In what has been defined as the European Capital of Culture 2006, 30% of the show risks being cancelled, and the artistic director of the project resigned just before the beginning of the carnival. But there is no stopping the festivities! To finance the remaining organised events, the organisers could always try to find the hidden treasure. A tradition which started in the 1960s by a pirate radio station giving directions to drivers, the treasure hunt, which has been the pride of the Patras carnival, has kept up with the times. The participants now ride around on motorbikes and the clues can be found on the internet! 50,000 people take part, dressed in costumes and wearing masks. If you are expecting a quiet time, try not to be in Patras for the carnival which is ranked 3rd in the world, behind Rio de Janeiro and New Orleans.

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Cádiz, Spain > Singing, music and dancing

One of Europe’s least known carnivals is the one in Cádiz, Spain, held from 21 January to 5 March. The usual floats and masks and colours are all present, but what makes it stand out from other carnivals is its ‘Carnival Group Contest’, in which groups of friends, from 4 to 40 people, choose their costumes, compose music and lyrics then parade on a float. The groups can take part in 4 categories: ‘Chirigotas’, the main group consisting of jokers singing satirical songs; ‘Comparsas’ who are more poetic and elegant, ‘Choirs‘ and ‘Quartets‘. The grand final of the competition is shown on television and is 10 hours of guaranteed laughs. The groups take to the streets on tractors, trailers or any kind of platform and there is a potpourri of irony, sarcasm and social criticism, mixed with the Spanish sun, great music and good food. What more can you ask for? An extremely artistic carnival, and the longest in Europe, which is well worth a visit.

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The Bulgarian acrobat Snezhina will be the star at a grand show in the La Fenice Theatre in Venice.

The theatre will turn into a giant disco club during the Venice carnival and this will be the greatest event throughout the carnival. The event is called “The Grand Ball of Cavalchina”. In the lounges of La Fenice five jazz musicians will entertain the guests.

The program if the theatre will also include performances by international circus artist, who will demonstrate their talents in circus tricks from the beginning of the 19th century London, Paris and Venice theatres.

Dig out that wig and the dodgy outfit

Somewhere tucked away at the back of our wardrobe we’ve all got one. It’s that glittery and hideously bright costume that we cringe to look at but somehow still absolutely adore. We wouldn’t of course be seen dead in it under any normal circumstances. But we do love to make excuses to put it on.

There are the times that our lover seriously disappoints us and we pour the wine, put on the loud 60s music, and out comes the outfit complete with wig and bright lipstick as we prance around the house pretending to be a true stage diva, arms in the air and belting at the top of our lungs.

Then there’s the second excuse to wear it, carnival time! And no, it’s not just females who resort to such silliness. Every man seems to have an unleashed Don Juan within him and perhaps even more bizarre is that many males rejoice in the chance to dress up as women. Of course, it’s all completely acceptable during carnival because somehow absolutely anything goes, and just as long as you don’t wake up still wanting to wear your outfit out to lunch the next day, you’re absolutely safe.

Around the world, people love the idea of dressing up and having wild parties. But how did it all the crazy festivities begin? With carnival celebrations taking place in so many countries around the globe, the origin of the world ‘carnival’ is often debated, but it’s most commonly believed to come from the Italian word ‘carnevale’. The word literally means ‘to say farewell to the meat’, and because Catholics are not supposed to eat meat during lent, they began the tradition of holding a wild costume festival right before the first day of lent.

Carnival then became a yearly festivity where people lost their inhibitions and indulged in an orgy of feasting, dancing and other sensual activities. As time passed, carnivals in Italy became quite famous and spread across Europe and Latin America.

Just like many other festivities and cultural traditions, Cypriot carnival celebrations actually date back to the beginning of the last century, when homes in Limassol opened their doors and welcomed round friends and family for a feast of food and wine.

“They began celebrating privately,” says Skevi Antoniou from the Cultural Department of Limassol Municipality, “and would dress up in old costumes, completely disguising their faces. They would then go over to friend’s houses and tease them as they would pretend to be someone else. It was all about having a great laugh and experiencing one day a year when you could pretend to be anyone you wanted to be.”

The Greek word ‘Apokries’ is symbolic, as just like ‘carnevale’, it literally means ‘without meat’ and so everyone would tuck into juicy delights before the fasting was set to begin. Crowds would roam the streets singing and dancing, and even the donkeys were decorated and proudly paraded around town. The Limassol Municipality then began to realise how much people enjoyed prancing around the streets and took the initiate to organise carnival events on a yearly basis.

Although things are undoubtedly a little different today, Limassol remains the centre of all the fun, and hosts the largest parade down Archbishop Makarios III Avenue. But all the fun begins days before the parade. This Tuesday, you can go along to a big carnival fiesta outside the Mediaeval Castle, where everyone is invited to go along disguised in costumes and participate in all sorts of fun with music and dancing. On Thursday, a second dance will take place in the square of the First Municipal Market, where the Dreams Choir will be keeping you on your feet with old and new hits. At both the parties, awards will be given for the best three carnival costumes.

The big grand parade in Limassol this year will be taking place on February 18, with all the usual bright and cheerful floats and spectacles. It may not be Rio, but efforts are being made to make the carnival bigger and better each year. As festivities coincide with Valentine’s Day celebrations, you can expect many associations with passion and love. And for those of you who’ve already set your sights on the Carnival King in the centre of town, you’ll have probably realised that he represents the king of love.

“The carnival in Cyprus is really getting bigger and better each year. There are more costumes, more colour and more and more people who want to take part. The unified music means people have started dancing in the streets and have really become more enthusiastic than ever,” says Antoniou.

Some of the biggest floats in this year’s parade include ‘Antonio and Cleopatra’, ‘Carnival from Venice’, ‘Spiderman’ and ‘Oliver Twist’. But the most intriguing are the rather imposing ‘speed camera’ floats. Are the authorities trying to prove a point by any chance? The parade will be followed by the Limassol Municipality Philharmonic Orchestra, and prizes will be awarded for all the best floats, groups and individuals.

There will also be celebrations taking place in Paphos, with a grand parade on February 17 place on Poseidon Avenue as crowds gather to cheer all those taking part. Now all that’s left is deciding on your outfit. Unless of course you’ve already put on that wonderfully bizarre gorilla costume half way through reading this article.

CARNIVAL EVENTS >
Limassol Dances
February 13: Carnival Fiesta, outside Mediaeval Castle Square, 8.30pm
February 15: Outdoor Carnival Dancing Event, outside Municipal Market, 8.30pm

Grand Limassol Parade
February 18. Starting point, Ayios Nicolaos round about, ending at Ayia Sophia traffic lights, Archbishop Makarios III Avenue. 1.30pm.

Grand Paphos Parade
February 17. Poseidon Avenue. 4pm.

Tens of communities around Greece have benefited financially from a growing interest in their peculiar Carnival traditions, which has boosted domestic tourism in recent years, local politicians said yesterday.

“From zero tourism, we are now in a position where the possibilities are endless,” said Paris Koukoulopoulos, the Mayor of Kozani in northern Greece. The city’s Carnival festivities are expected to attract some 100,000 people from other parts of the country. This will bring in several million euros for the local economy.

The Carnival season begins 10 weeks before Easter and culminates on the weekend before Clean Monday, this year falls on 19 February.

Authorities in nearby Grevena expect more than 20,000 tourists to have passed through the area by the end of this weekend.

“We cannot make an exact evaluation but it is worth noting that over this three-day weekend, the number of visitors in the city will outnumber the local population (15,000),” Grevena Mayor Giorgos Noutsos said.

Xanthi in northeastern Greece and Naoussa in northern Greece are among other areas that are seeking to cash in on people coming to see Carnival parades and other traditional shows. Authorities there estimate that 100,000 and 40,000 visitors respectively will attend the festivities.

Patras will hold the biggest Carnival parade in the country. It costs around euro 800,000 but more than 100,000 people are expected to spend the weekend in the city and give local businesses a significant boost. Hotel rooms in the area cost between euro 60 and 100 per night during this weekend and hotels are usually 90 percent full for the culmination of the Carnival season.

Despite ongoing violence that has shaken Rio de Janeiro for months, the Brazilian city on Wednesday said it expects 700,000 tourists for its world-famous Carnival celebrations this year.

The city’s Tourism Secretary Rubem Medina estimated that Rio will earn about 500 million dollars from tourist activities, compared to about 15 million dollars that city authorities have invested in the celebrations.

The high point of Rio’s celebrations is the samba parade on Sunday and Monday nights when 13 of the city’s top-tier carnival groups will parade through the specially designed “Sambadromo” stadium, which holds 60,000.

“I believe there is nothing like it anywhere in the world,” Medina said. Publicity campaigns abroad to advertise the most famous Carnival in Brazil had succeeded in countering the negative effect of news reports on ongoing violence in Rio de Janeiro, Medina said.

“We have the greatest New Year’s celebrations in the world and the greatest Carnival. Rio de Janeiro remains an icon of Brazil,” he said.

Carnival celebrations also were taking place in other cities across Brazil, such as Salvador and Olinda on the country’s northeastern coast where festivities got under way Thursday.

Some hate it… others bear it, while others simply live every day of the year waiting for those five short days, usually in February, when the silliness, the senseless and the idiotic takes over.

Carnival has been celebrated in Malta since the arrival of the Knights of St. John in 1535, but some studies even date the first carnival revelry back to the year 1470. Up until 1751, carnival was an activity exclusive to Valletta. Nowadays, revellers gather in every corner of the islands during the five days preceding Ash Wednesday from Nadur in Gozo to Ghaxaq in the south of Malta. One thing is for sure, the Maltese have had valid excuses to mark carnival for hundreds of years and the celebrations have come a long way since.

Beyond any doubt the centre of attraction of today’s Maltese Carnival is the grand defiles of floats in the streets of Valletta and Floriana. Though the controversy over the restriction imposed by the authorities on the themes that can be represented in floats has marred the past few editions, the celebrations involving these often ingenious devices remain as colourful and popular as ever.

For many years, Carnival has completely entrenched itself in Maltese tradition. It represents a colourful event, in which people from all walks of life participate. Carnival in Malta takes up five days before Lent. Traditionally this was the time to indulge and feast before sobering up for the 40-day fast which in Christian and Catholic tradition preceded the Resurrection of Christ. Actually carne vale marked the period when meat and other earthly pleasures could be enjoyed in a spree prior to the commencement of the term of Lenten penitence. In Malta the five feast days are celebrated almost exclusively in the capital, Valletta, even though one can find numerous activities in other towns.

Historically, this entertainment can be traced back to the early 1400s. Encouraged by the Grand Masters of the Order of St. John of Jerusalem (1530-1798), Carnival declined in the 19th century but managed to live through the period of British rule (1800-1964) and has thus been handed down in an almost unbroken tradition of about six centuries.

During the carnival days, Valletta bursts at the bastions with phosphorescent carnival floats. These floats are the mainstay of the Maltese Carnival. Massive cardboard structures, painted in an explosion of screaming colours, start their route at Floriana on the outskirts of the capital, enter Valletta’s main gate, then commence a slow parade through the principal streets. The “city built for gentlemen” turns into the City of Fools for the carnival days. Prizes are awarded for the best artistic dances, costumes, floats and grotesque masks. Before the Second World War, the floats often represented local political figures. In the 1920s and 30s the caricature of political does not, however, consist only of these floats. Throughout the five days of merrymaking, numerous activities take place throughout the island.

Carnival in Gozo is a separately organised edition of the festivity. These festivities were first officially organised in Gozo in the year 1952. The Gozitans have their own floats and parades. The main activities take place in It-Tokk, the main square in Gozo’s capital Victoria, and in Nadur square. The Gozitan Carnival bears witness to a separate and autonomous interpretation of the festive occasion and is therefore instilled with a character of its own, stemming from the different temperament of the people who set it up. But a parallel event, which takes place in Nadur, defies the official definition of a standardised Carnival activity such as those held in Valletta and Victoria. The novelty of the Grotesque Carnival on Nadur is that there is no organising committee to plot out its course.

Every year, there is the so-called Parata, a re-enactment in dance form of the 16th century struggle between the forces of Maltese and Knights of St John against those of the Muslim Turks. Nowadays it is mainly children who participate in the dance. The Parata is of special significance in the history of the Maltese Carnival. Under the Knights it was taken very seriously, and the Maltese eagerly awaited its performance because the rule was “no Parata, no Carnival”.

Grand Master Zondadari introduced the traditional game Kukkanja in 1721. A crowd assembled in the Palace Square on Carnival Monday and at a given signal attacked the hams, sausages and live animals tied to the long beams fixed against the guard house and covered over with branches of trees in leaf. The provisions became the property of those who, having seized them, were able to carry them off in safety through the crowd.

The Carnival spirit lives on and year after year more tourists visit Malta with the sole purpose to join the revelry of the Maltese. Carnival. 2007 is being organised by the Malta Carnival Committee within the National Folklore Commission (Ministry of Tourism and Culture). Ticket information may be obtained via email noelsammut@maltaculture.com.

Carnival celebrations continued Saturday in the Brazilian metropolis of Rio de Janeiro under tightened security measures and in the shadow of increasing crime. Rio’s Mayor Cesar Maia on Friday handed command of the city to “King Momo,” the emperor of Carnival, formally authorizing the beginning of celebrations.

“You are now the ruler,” Maia said to Alex Oliveira. The residents of Rio have been shocked by recent crimes, including the killing last week of a six-year-old who was dragged to his death entangled in a seat belt by criminals who stole his mother’s car.

Over the past few days, the slum area Complexo de Alemao, one of the largest and most violent in Rio, has been the scene of several shootings between drug dealers, police and the National Security Force, leaving at least six people dead.

Tens of thousands took to the streets Friday amid the samba music, costumes and confetti demanding an end to violence and a similar demonstration was planned for Saturday. In an effort to achieve a “truce” during Brazil’s main popular feast, the city is adding 30,000 men to the police deployment.

City authorities stressed that the 700,000 tourists expected in Rio would be safe to enjoy the world-famous Carnival. With a murder rate of 50 per 100,000 inhabitants Rio is one of the most dangerous cities in the world.

The climax of Carnival is to be the monumental parades of “escolas de samba” (the schools of samba) at the Sambodromo in downtown Rio. The shows are expected to draw 90,000 people on both Sunday and Monday.