Carnival-Belgian Style (not New Orleans)

In French class at school Charlie learned all about Carnival and how it is celebrated in this one Belgian town called Binche.  It happens to be an hour from our front door, so after all of his excitement about it, we had to go see it for ourselves.

There are many different parts to the festival but it seems to revolve around the "Gilles", which are the men from the town that dress up in an elaborate costume and do different things for each day of the festival.  We went on Mardi Gras, (Fat Tuesday), but it there were activities on Sunday & Monday too (and various other things in the weeks ahead).

The Gilles dress up in beautiful hand sewn costumes, they stuff themselves full of straw.  In the morning they wear identical matching wax masks and they walk with a small bundle of sticks to chase away the cold.  We arrived nice and early...and we needed them to chase away the cold...it was cold but at least the sun was out...

They have lots of bells on the costume, which make lots of jingles and they wear wooden clogs which sound cool when they stomp/dance together on the cobblestone streets.  Here is a video so you can hear what it sounds like...very neat!

Special cakes for sale in the bakery-how cool!

There are also other groups besides the Gilles, we found a few of them.

One thing Charlie knew is that none of the participants can move unless they have a drummer drumming them.  We followed this one little guy to his car...drummed by his father.

Charlie got caught up in the spirit and we had to buy him a few instruments.  On the table behind him you can see the yellow flowers that people carried or wore on hats.  I am not sure what kind of flowers they were...but surely a flower of spring!

A good big sister!

We also followed one small Gille to his house, he was drummed the whole way home for lunch and his grandparents were there to greet him.  I didn't get a picture of him, but here are some other boys dressed up...

In the late afternoon, the Gilles go out with wooden baskets full of oranges and throw them to the crowd.  Some Gilles also wear gorgeous ostrich feather hats.  We missed the orange throwing part because the kids didn't want to wait around for hours to see it and by the time Greg and I got back for the night part...all we found were oranges everywhere in the streets.  The oranges are supposed to bring good luck.  Since we missed the oranges this year, we will have to return to get one next year for the luck!

The guy behind me looks like maybe the long day is starting to catch up with him.  Some of these guys start getting their costumes on at about 4 AM!

In the evening, they walk with the empty orange baskets and no masks. We did find one guy wearing the ostrich feather hat still...its the giant white thing you see below...

Much of the activity took place in the Grand Place here is the Town Hall building.

Whenever we walked among the festival goers people were greeting each other or shouting out to their Gille.  It really was an amazing local tradition that was cool to see!  It is a UNESCO Designated Festival and now I know why!