Carnival is here… literally and metaphorically!

Carnival arrived and it’s already finished in the south of the Netherlands. What a mess, what a panic, how much alcohol… I was impressed by the fact that on Monday morning around 7 o’ clock, while I was leaving for work, people were getting back home. There was nobody at work and the parking space was empty of cars. That last one I didn’t mind at all.

The only bad comment I had for all the carnival craze was the Dutch carnival music. It was nothing like what we have come to know as “classic carnival music”, I mean the Rio de Janeiro tunes and Brazilian mambo and rumba extravaganzas … The pop-folk music they played at the Dutch carnival sounded more like our own Greek Liberace Giannis Floriniotis …That is the kind of music you can afford to like and enjoy only after you have had 5 liters of wine already. But if you haven’t and you see it all as a non-drunk observer, there is no charm to it anymore, it actually sounds kinda awful, almost like a cacophony!! Help!! Suddenly you think you’re in Patras (Greek carnival city) but in the Netherlands. And it looks like the whole country is like that.

On the other hand, there were some different kind of “carnivals” in Greece recently. Greek farmers took to the streets protesting against government measures. I do not know if anyone saw what an ingenious way some Cretan farmers found to protest against the government. They painted the names of our three prominent political parties on three little piglets and let them walk around the streets with the spray paint on them. First come the pigs, and the people followed them. What an ugly thing to see, what a torture for the little animals…. is there any limit to stupidity?

There are more civilized ways to fight for your rights, aren’t there?

I am wondering who is more of a carnival, the dressed up ones or the farmers who spray- painted the piglets.

Imagine the big bad wolf coming out to catch the three little piglets … and all those who tortured them!

That’s all folks…