The day after the Zundert flower parade, the village is still dominated by the colored dahlias. Ten thousand visitors take a look at the twenty parade cars. Sometimes it doesn’t stop there, but the flowers are also smelled. One comes first, the other grows the flowers and comes to inspect the competition.
Traditionally, the viewing day is the day after the parade. On a large square, the colorful cars stand side by side. This is the last opportunity to admire them, because on Tuesday the trucks will be pulled apart with a large crane and grab machines and removed in containers.
“I like others better.”
The winner of Klein-Zundertse Heikant is ten rows thick. The act, Freeland Festival, will be performed one more time. With a DJ on the car it seems like you are at a big festival. It causes the necessary smiles and swinging hip movements in the audience.
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A deserved winner, right? Well, Elly from Rucphen doesn’t quite agree with that. She laughs: “He’s very beautiful…” After a short silence, the maar comes: “I think others are more beautiful, like the purple trees. But I’m just a layman, I have no idea how much work it is and whether special techniques have been used.”
“I dare say that this is more beautiful than the carnival cars in Bergen op Zoom.”
The critical Elly comes to Zundert every year for the parade. “Usually on Sunday, but yesterday I couldn’t. That is why I am here today with the children to take a good look at everything.” Whoever does that are Jeroen and Janneke from Hoogerheide. “We are here for the first time. We were curious about everything we had already seen in the media.”
The couple is staring. “I dare say that this is more beautiful than the carnival cars in Bergen op Zoom”, Jeroen says cautiously. There is also another winner for Janneke; like Elly she goes for the purple trees. “It is very fragile. That car stands out because it is so thin. The rest is such a mass, this one is different and therefore stands out.”
“I look at the color codes, if it’s all correct.”
Whoever is walking around is the 76-year-old Dirk from the village itself. “I take care of the flowers for hamlet ‘t Stuk. The old ones have to pick, they can’t build anymore,” he says with a laugh. Dirk looks at the parade floats with a professional look. “I look at the color codes to see if everything is correct. We made a hippopotamus, a very gray chariot. The rest is more colorful.” And the flower grower thinks that is a bit of a shame. They eventually finished seventh. “But sometimes you have to try something.”
After this day, Dirk and all other parade participants in Zundert fall into a black hole for four months. Everything starts all over again in January. “Then we start drawing, planting tubers, maintaining and building the field.” But first, enjoy this year’s splendor of colors for a few hours.
