Aalborg Karneval

When you think about Denmark, stereotypically the first thought which comes to your mind would be probably cold weather and not so friendly people that rather don't speak to strangers. Yet, once a year everything changes and you can experience the biggest carnival in Northern Europe, with over 70,000 dressed up participants walking down the streets. This year's edition finished one week ago and I'll try to describe my experience and thoughts about it.

Location

Aalborg on a daily basis is not the biggest or most exciting city in Europe, not many people from outside of Scandinavian countries have heard about it before. It is located in Northern Jutland - the most northern part of Denmark. But during this one week around carnival it is getting very crowded, students from the whole country are coming just to have fun and some of them are even visiting from abroad.

International Parade

The whole Karneval starts with International Parade. For the few hours in the afternoon, the main street in Aalborg is being closed and professional groups of dancers or street performers are going from Busterminal down to the city, with wagons constructer by themselves, and showing what they have prepared as a show for the crowd.

The groups of artists come to Aalborg from all around the world, some of them come back every year to experience this atmosphere one more time. People are gathered around them on bith sides of the street but it is also possible to buy sits at the tribunes and watch the show from above.

International Parade is finished with ritual burning of the bull, which is also an official opening to the Karneval. In the next days there are activities for kids "ChildrenCarnival" with dressing up, painting faces, and having fun.

Main Parade

After the organized, more professional and good-looking part, here comes the real carnival for the masses. It is organized one week after International Parade and looks like any other carnival - the city center is closed and people walk from different points in the city to one main meeting place, which in this case is big park in the city center - Kildeparken. You need to buy bracelets to get to the park and go to concerts but participating in the parade and having fun on the way is completely free of charge.

As crazy as it looks, the parade consists of 70,000 people of different ages, mostly dressed up in crazy outfits. Some of them are spending weeks constructing their own wagons just for this one day, to leave them after the parade. It starts at 10AM and lasts about 2 - 2,5 hours, so you need to get up early to get ready. If you ask most of the Danes from Aalborg or cities in vicinity about Karneval, they will most likely get very excited, convincing you that you will have a lot of fun and showing million pictures from previous editions. They really are obsessed, I mean they tend to gather in one house previous evening, wake up around 6AM to have a breakfast together and start pre-drinking while getting ready and packing. It isn't too crazy but if you drink constantly since early morning, many people are already drunk at the parade ;P

Don't get surprised if you see baby carriages, hint: they don't have babies inside but it's rather a way of walking around without carrying alcohol in bags ;) It is not very kid-friendly event, so many people just stay at balconies of their apartments and watch everything from above, which might be better idea as it is easy to get lost in the crowd.

It is very colorful, everyone is friendly (or just drunk) and they would offer you drinks, suncream or simply compliment your costume. It is a lot of fun if you can be responsible and prepared, taking watter bottles with you (there are stations to refill them) as it can be really hot even in Denmark, for example this year we had 27 degrees! You also need to stay close to your friends or at least make sure that someone will pick up their phone as it isn't fun to look for your group for the whole time of the parade.

When everyone gets to the park, most people just take a rest and chill for a couple of hours in the shade but there are also many different activities organized for those that don't have enough of partying. There are concerts, speed weddings, foam party, and many more things to do each year.

It is worth coming to Aalborg at least for the Karneval, when the whole city turns into one huge colorful party and everyone is happy (maybe it isn't so good the next day both for the people and trashed streets but nobody cares when they have fun :P). And I can tell you a secret: the weather is really good every year during the main parade, it is not a coincidence that they're organizing it in May, instead of January as in the rest of the world. So if you don't have anything to do before the festival season starts, join the biggest party in Northern Europe!

Photo gallery