Netherlands // Carnaval in Eindhoven

Being from California, we have never really celebrated Carnaval besides drinking lots of beer and wearing boas + beads (re: Mardi Gras in New Orleans). Aparently Carnaval in Southern Holland is a HUGE deal. We were going to head to Maastricht because that's where the biggest parade and celebrations were taking place, but we decided to go to Eindhoven instead since it was closer and a smaller commitment. And we were still completely blown away.
We headed down there (about an hour and a half train ride) with a few friends with the purpose of seeing the parade and being observers of the celebrations, but as soon as we stepped on the train and saw a ton of people dressed up in elaborate costumes, I knew that we were going to be in for a surprise. As soon as we arrived in Eindhoven we realized that EVERYONE was dressed up and partaking in the festivities. Old, young, everyone - and not just boas and beads either, but FULL ON costumes. SO many onesie, face paint, and elaborate costumes, to the point that it looked like it was halloween on steroids. We wandered around self consciously in our jeans and jackets and then found a good place to watch the parade. I'm not quite sure how to explain the parade, so hopefully the photos do it justice. The whole parade was crazy long with SO many floats and we had NO idea what was going on with half of the floats (farmers + bankers dancing together? farmers chasing after fruits & veggies? Babies in a bed?) Regardless, we were super entertained and spent the whole time super confused and cracking up. And some of those floats are definitely going to end up in a junkyard / horror film / every child's nightmares.

this kid was loungin' the whole time

After the parade we met up with some friends that live down there and immediately felt out of place. We wandered down the main party street where every single shop was a bar and I kid you not there were HUNDREDS of people and every single person was dressed up. We stuck around a bit but weren't really in the rage mood (and kept getting confused looks as to why we were in regular clothes...) so we headed out once things started to get too wild. If we had known it was going to be such a wild thing we definitely would have dressed up (any excuse to wear a onesie) and participated in the festivities, but we're happy to have just witnesses the craziness of the day!