Every Wednesday, there are English classes for our elderly in the Centar Zlatno Doba and sometimes Klara and me (we are the two international ESC volunteers) give presentations about current topics. In today’s presentation I explained the origin and purpose of carnival. Carnival is the festive period before Lent (the 40-day lasting period of praying and abstaining from certain things like meat, sweets, alcohol, etc. in the Christian religion) and ends with the Fat Tuesday.
It is a time of celebrating, eating, dancing and enjoying and marked by colourful and flamboyant parades, balls and parties on the streets. Further on, I told the English students about the biggest carnival in the world, which takes place in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Then I explained the tradition of the annual “battle of flowers” in Nice, France and the importance of the artistic and historic masks of the Carnevale in Venice, Italy. Last but not least, I talked about my favourite “Fasching” tradition in Austria, more precisely in Ausseerland.
There people wear artistic costumes called “Flinserl” and men dress up as “Trommelweiber”, so to speak women with drums. All over Austria people eat Wiener Schnitzel and then Faschingskrapfen, which are basically the same as Croatian krafne.
At the end, the ladies told me about Croatian carnival traditions, krafne and the famous fašnik in Rijeka.
Lena Matuschik