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Forget Rio. Carnival in Malta is a far cry from that wondrous spectacle popular the world over. But it still has its unique characteristics and peculiarities. You can happily find your other persona and for a few days let yourself change into costumes and characters that you’ve always dreamed and fantasised about.
Let yourself loose in the general revelry and the make-believe of this loud and colourful annual festival. The official Carnival in Valletta 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 it’s the big, boisterous, utterly anonymous Carnival that you seek and the chance to change gender for an evening or two, to scare the daylights out of friends and strangers and to bring out the Frankenstein in you, you have to cross the stretch of water to the sister island of Gozo.
The village of Nadur still holds the most traditional carnival of all. It 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.
If Valletta is not Rio, 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.
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 to you.
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