So, yesterday we had a big Sinterklaas celebration with about twenty students attending. Sinterklaas (Sint Nicholas) is a Bishoply saint who visits the Netherlands each year to bring gifts and sweets to the good children, and bag the naughty children up to take them to Spain, where he spends the rest of the year. He is accompanied by a number of black servants, known as Zwarte Pieten (Black Peters).
On Sunday I was approached about wanting to play a part as one of the two Black Peters of this special occassion, and happily I said yes.
Martijn and Annemarie played the Sint and the other Piet, respectively, and we took about an hour chatting and getting dressed. We then left to go the Tafelstraat, where the celebration was being held, a few blocks away from Martijn's - sorry, the Sint's apartment.
I must admit I hadn't expected the popularity of the feast to be this big, yet I grew up with it and celebrated it as a child each year: wherever we went, dressed up as we were (in professional costumes, we did look the part) people greeted us and got big smiles on their faces. People were waving at us from behind the windows, whether they be windows of houses, restaurants or bars. At some places they broke out in cheerful song. And note, this wasn't just when there were children present. In fact, we didn't see any children at all. Adults seem to enjoy the feast as much as the little ones do, and no one ever broke the pretence.
After a short walk (relatively cold, though we Black Peters had the advantage here over the Sint - you don't want to be a Bishop in winter, Martijn can assure you) we got to the Tafelstraat. I'm not sure whether the people were informed of our coming, apart from the organisers, but the students - particularly the foreign ones - looked absolutely overwhelmed. This may just have been the result of too much warm choco or of them recognising us and thinking we looked mad, but it was great nonetheless.
We then had about 45 minutes of entertaining the crowd (which was very funny but I suppose not very interesting if you don't know the people), before leaving.
Taking a detour, we walked over the Onze Lieve Vrouwe plein, where we bumped into some Spaniards. Now, according to the stories Sinterklaas lives in Madrid, and these obviously were well-informed tourists as they knew it. So the lot of us now feature in a collection of holiday pics made by some Spanish tourists.
Then we passed by a pub, looked inside and... spotted another Black Peter!
This demanded a reprimande, because as Piet you can't just drink in working hours. We went in, had a bit of a chat,
- "Want to share a drink?"
"Unlike you, Piet, we actually feel commitment for our job, and still have half the city to visit tonight" - the people inside all thought it was very funny. And it was.
Then came the cleaning ourselves, which wasn't much fun and took quite a while. This is the part where Sinterklaas has a clear advantage over his servant, as he simply has to change clothes and wash the moustache-glue of his face. Lucky devil.
Quote of the Day:
Me: "Quite funny we should bump into Spaniards like that."
Sinterklaas: "Well, they do say that, when abroad, you always meet people from your own country."
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