Tuesday 18 November 2008

There are no holes in his shoes but a big hole in is his world


Me and my Finnish friend Ann-Sofi decided to go shopping in Antwerp last Saturday. During a couple of hours we tried to find her a navy blue winter coat that exactly fitted her desires, but we unfortunately didn't manage.

When we were walking passed a shoe store we suddenly heard a lot of noise coming from the balcony of the shop. We looked up and saw two Zwarte Pieten yelling at the people on the streets and throwing candy and balloons to them. I told Ann-Sofi before about the Belgian/Dutch Sinterklaas tradition so she was very exited to hear Sinterklaas was arriving on his boat in Antwerp that day (the celebration itself is only on the 6th of December, but the man always 'arrives' a while before).

After taking some pictures with the Zwarte Pieten in the shoe store we went over to the harbour to witness the arrival. Apparantly he had already arrived (his boat was quite small and we hadn't seen it yet, we were even photographing the wrong boat - a huge one that was just passing by - that explains why we were the most exited people around).

When we finally saw him on his carriage, we watched a part of the procession. Ann-Sofi got completely obsessed by Sinterklaas and it didn't take long for me to get completely sucked up by her enthusiasm and happily join in. I can't remember laughing like that for a long, long time.














Ann-Sofi being obviously Sinterklaas' biggest fan

me displaying my pervert nature on this doll

5 comments:

  1. Ha ha, we don't have anything like that here. In fact, it wouldn't even be allowed.

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  2. Ah, you pervy! :p
    Btw, since you like dolls so much, watch this: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3710987618964917848&ei=fEQlSamOF4Li2gL-son3Bg&q=guys+and+doll

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  3. Well, a lot of people would think it was racist. I know that's not what's intended, but a lot of people wouldn't care about the intent, they just don't accept people dressing up in blackface.

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  4. Oh, I see. The guy next to Ann-Sofi in the second picture actually was a real black guy, but still he had some extra make-up on. :D

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