Nadur Carnival - Gozo
Almost every developed Christian nation has a go at staging a carnival in some guise or other to mark the start of Lent - and Nadur, on Gozo, is certainly not one to be left out on that score! What’s great about this carnival, however, are the strange characteristics and peculiarities that make it utterly memorable and entirely unique.
At most carnivals, you can happily find yourself a new persona, and for a few days let yourself change into someone you’ve always dreamed and fantasized about. You don’t have to delve too deep into Mardi Gras at New Orleans, for example, to find normally sensible middle-aged women showing their boobs for a string of plastic beads. Now that’s not normal behaviour, is it?
Carnivals are an opportunity to let loose in the general revelry and the make-believe at a loud and colourful annual festival. The official carnival in Valletta, for example, is a highly-organised affair which is ideal for families and children. You will never meet more Zorros, Red Indians, Robots, Action Men and little Senoritas all packed in a few square metres ever again in your life!
But if you’re looking for something a little out of the ordinary on Malta – you need to cross the stretch of water to the sister island of Gozo and head for Nadur. Here you’ll find the big, boisterous, utterly anonymous carnival, where people hide behind their costumes and keep silent to avoid being recognised for the five evenings of festivities.
It’s a chance to change gender for an evening or two, to scare the daylights out of friends and strangers and to bring out the Frankenstein's monster or the vampire in you.
It all takes place in the little village of Nadur, which still holds the most unusual carnival of all. This is where hundreds of Maltese and Gozitan couples, tourists and possibly a large secret army of closet drag queens come together to roam the streets, dance to the band music, make merry, eat, drink and generate enough laughter to last for the rest of the year.
Valletta Carnival may not be New Orleans or Rio, but Nadur is not Valletta. The strong arm of organisation has not rendered it predictable or helplessly touristic. The Nadur Carnival happily remains as untouched by rigid strictures and rules as the first time it was held, spontaneously, several centuries ago.
The maxim is: go out and be happy. No one will know it’s you, just as much as you don’t know the lovely blonde with horrendously big chest next to you is actually the lad from Chatham you met on the plane from Luton. The surreal takes over for a few hours. Let yourself go!
When all is back to ‘normal’ and Nadur is only a framed souvenir picture at home, you may still think the other persona was a happier you. That’s what carnival does!.
The Nadur Carival is held annually from Friday to Tuesday - on the five days preceding Ash Wednesday. Or put another way, it finishes on the night before Lent begins - Mardi Gras!
