A crazy carnival weekend in Xanthi

Xanthi is a small but beautiful city in the north part of Greece. It has a university, so there are a lot of students there, and nice bars and cafeterias to hang out.

Every year, on the carnival period, the city is transformed into a huge party place. Specifically, the last weekend of the carnival, lots of people all over Greece (particularly from the northern part) visit the city to celebrate the carnival and have fun!

Carnival in Xanthi is one of the 3 most famous carnivals in Greece, along with the biggest carnival of Patra and the carnival of Rethymno (a city on the island Crete). The city where I come from and I live in, Thessaloniki, although is the second biggest city of Greece, it doesn't have any special carnival event and not a parade.

This is the reason why me and my friends always wanted to visit Xanthi and experience something that we were not used to.

One of our friends was at a faculty in that city, and invited us to visit him for the carnival. We stayed there for the weekend and visited also the parade on Sunday. We liked it so much that we decided to visit the city also the next years.

The next year he continued his studies in our city Thessaloniki, so we were disappointed because we hadn't any place to stay in for the weekend. Luckily, our friend had a nice friend who were from Xanthi and was also studying there and he could accommodate us in his second house. We were back in the game: we found our costumes and went to Xanthi to party!

TIP: The easiest way to get there is by car, but we usually don't own one, so we cannot take it for a trip. Also there is the bus that goes there, but the cheapest and most common way that the students choose to travel there is by train. Due to the fact that it is very cheap (15 euros both ways), you have to book your tickets several days before, so that you definitely find one.

After the short break for the tip, I will continue my experience.

From that year that our new friend was so kind and accommodate us, we "booked" our place also for the following years. His house is not very big, but we are always a lot, so if you enter the house while we are sleeping, you will not stop counting heads!

So, let's make a combination of our canival programme the last years.

Some days before the big weekend, we discuss about our costumes, give opinions to each other and finally go to purchase whatever we decided.

Also, we go to book our train tickets in advance, or when we are lucky, we find a ride there, because it is much faster than the train.

Friday afternoon we are there! We go to our friend's house, chat a little bit and start preparing for the party night!

Before going out we usually go to eat a sandwich at a place next to our house with cheap sandwiches. We also buy some cheap white wine, mix it with coca cola and start the pre-drinking at home!

Then, we dress up and go out to for the real party. All the streets are full with people dressed as pirates, zombies, clowns and whatever you can imagine.

The bars are also full inside and outside, and you can hear loud music everyone. Outside on the streets there are vendors selling wigs, masks and cheap wine, and everyone is dancing and chatting with the others.

That night there is also one typical party of the university, which is located a little bit outside the city, around the student's restaurants. You can easily get there by taxi, and if you are more than 2 people, the divided price will be very cheap.

The place is full of people and to enter you have to pay a fee of 3 or 4 euros (the money goes to the university) with beer or drink included! The price of the beer is 1 euro, and with 3 or 3, 50 euros you can buy yourself a drink.

The time between 2 and 4 in the night, you will feel a little bit uncomfortable if you cannot stand crowded places, because it is extremely full. However, if you are in a good mood you can use it for your advantage and meet new people and dance all the famous carnival and commercial songs that are being played. Me and my friends belong to the second group of people!

After 5 a. m, people start leaving slowly, but we always stay until the end, because at some point we have a lot of space to dance and the music changes a little bit and is more our style.

Then, we go outside and there are a lot of taxis waiting so we don't have to wait outside in the cold. We take a taxi and go home to sleep a couple of hours and be ready for the next day.

On Saturday, we wake up, drink a coffee and eat some breakfast to get some energy and we are ready for our second day of partying. We get out of the house and walk around the city,

There are a lot of nice bars and cafeterias in Xanthi, so there are plenty of options to have a coffee. On the upper town, the old part of the city, there are two beautiful cafe-bars. The one is called ''Ntili'' and the other is called ''Filistron''. These are our favourite places, so we choose one of these to drink a coffee or something stronger, a traditional Greek drink called ''tsipouro''.

After that, we grab a sandwich on our way back home and stay there a couple of hours to rest and pre-drink. We wear our costumes again and go out to walk around the city, where there are again lots of people standing on the streets, drinking and dancing. When the weather is not very cold or rainy, we also stay outside to drink and dance, because we are usually a big company and it is hard to find place inside a bar, because they all are overcrowded. If the weather is not suitable for being out, we walk around to find a bar and stay there until our favourite place ''Filistron'' has some free space, so we always end up there.

After our crazy night when the sun starts to rise, we are all drunk and tired, so it's time to go home. We grab something for breakfast, eat and then go to sleep.

Finally our favourite day of the weekend has come! It's Sunday morning and at midday the parade is about to start. If you want to be inside the parade, you have to join a group and rent a costume. However, because it is a bit expensive, we choose to wear our own costumes and just watch the parade. There are a lot of groups dressed as anything you can imagine, walking around the main streets of the city. The atmosphere is like you are in a small Rio De Janeiro. Ok, i'm overreacting but still, the fun that you have is indescribable.

When the parade is over, all the groups gather by the river and there is a big stage with a DJ playing music and we all continue our party there. They also give you free beers or wine if you ask them, and also there are a lot of people having barbecue and giving away free Greek ''souvlaki'' for everyone. Souvlaki is pork meat cut into pieces all together in a wooden stick. We eat one or two and continue drinking and dancing.

At about 6 in the afternoon, when it starts getting dark, we all watch the river, where a big fake clown in being burned, to celebrate the end of the carnival.

After that because we are very tired from the previous days, we don't have much power for partying. The mood gets better as the time passes, so after some time we decide that because it is our last night we should party!

On Monday morning, it is time to travel back home. We wake up, eat something fast, clean a bit the house and pack our staff. The train station is not so far, so it is reachable by foot. We walk until there and wait for the train to arrive because it usually has a delay.

The next 6 hours you don't hear any noise inside the train. Everyone is exhausted, so we fall asleep and wake up the moment we arrive back to Thessaloniki.

Then we all go to our places to rest and eat, and in the afternoon, we gather for a coffee to tell our news to our friends who weren't able to come.

From the next day already, we start making plans about what will our costumes be the next year!

The main square of Xanthi on Sunday's parade.

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Last year's Saturday night fever!

Xanthi 2015 celebrating it's 50 years!

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