Carnival in Maastricht

Hi again!

More things about carnival! If you are one of the people who have read my posts about Leuven or Antwerp, I think that this will interest you, so I encourage you to continue reading.

The start of the semester, the beginning of Erasmus. A very good opportunity to travel with new friends and a good opportunity to break the ice. This carnival falls on very good dates, so take advantage!

We had no idea what to do for carnival; the truth is that in Leuven there is not much going on (in regards to street parties and parades, I mean, there are a lot of parties), so we thought to ourselves, why not do something different? And so we did. We read that carnival in Maastricht was really good and had a great atmosphere and parties. We saw that we could get there in 2 hours by train and it wasn't too expensive (only 15€ return journey, I believe). It was fairly impromptu, but we still did it! Another idea that came to mind was to go to Cologne. I didn't have any idea what carnival would be like there, but we heard that it was also spectacular. I'm only telling you this so you can decide whether you want to see it for yourself :)

So, Maastricht, here we go. We met about 9 in the morning in Martelarenplein, the square where Leuven station is located. We bought our tickets, we made a transfer in Liege and at 11am, we arrived in Maastricht. I know that it's a fairly popular city for Erasmus students, so you'll find the atmosphere there safe!

There were about 20 of us, just enough people to be able to agree on the itinerary for the day. Some people wanted to do some touristy activities in the day since if you're going to a place that you're not likely to see again, it's nice to see some of the city before starting to party. Others wanted to go straight to buy things for the carnival since, as I previously mentioned, we planned this trip overnight so we didn't have enough time to prepare anything. The first option wasn't very successful (not at all successful), so I recommend that you organise yourselves better than we did and do both things, if you can.

On arriving in the city centre, you find yourself in a square full of bars and little stalls selling food and drink. If I remember correctly, we arrived around 13:00 and it was already full of people and music and had a very good atmosphere. We already had our "costumes" (as you can see from the photo, we were being fairly cheap in regards to our outfits haha), so we were all ready to start partying.

Firstly, we went to see the fancy dress parade and we stayed in the central square (Markt) until 9pm. I know it seems a little early to leave, but by that time we had already been dancing, jumping, singing, shouting and everything else for 6 hours. So we were quite tired and on top of that we were on a train for 2 hours (including the change). The funny thing is that when we got back to Leuven, we felt recharged and so we gave it our all in De Rector and other bars in the Oude Markt.

The fancy dress parade

Well, if you don't know what to do during carnival, going to Maastricht is a good plan. There was a lot of colour, a lot of music and a lot of fun!

I will write to you all soon with more Erasmus experiences!