yearly temporary insanity

First of all, sorry for leaving you hanging like this .. Recuperation of my yearly three day temporary insanity (see this post and this one from waaay before) took a lot longer than I had sceduled, been ill, over and over (and over) again. But no teers, I'm back now ;) - as promised with (crappy) pics and (less crappy, so I like to believe) make up/ dress up testemonies.


My own pictures of me and my friends (feat. our costume) wil follow real soon, but until then, these can put you in the right mood ;)


Just so you'd know, besides the amazingly beautiful and artistically unsurpassed parade, a huge part of the Aalst Carnival tradition is all about the 'Voil Jeanetten' (which means something close to 'dirty drags' in our dialect). These are men, dressed up as women, not like transvestites but more 'male' & dirty and with a huge dose of humour and self-questioning. Anyhow, with this little side info, I hope you'll enjoy the pictures yet to come.

Here you can see high quality pictures of the parade

Photography by Katrin Peeters on Cutting Edge

Ps: according to Wikipedia: Aalst is famous for its carnival festivities, celebrated every year in February/ March. A Prince Carnaval is elected, who is allowed to "rule" the city for three days. A big parade crosses the city on Sunday, with about 80 groups of costumed volunteers and parade cars. Carnaval Tuesday or Shrove Tuesday (by tradition, the day before Ash Wednesday), is known as the day of the 'Voil Jeannetten' (literally: "the Dirty Jennies"), i.e. men dressed as women. The festivities traditionally end with the "Burning of the Doll", happening on Tuesday evening.

Ps 2: In 2010, Oilsjt (Aalst) Carnaval became UNESCO World Heritage!!