Every year, the town celebrates the
"Krakelingen" festival on the last Sunday in February. And the main
attraction, apart from hurling bread rolls at each other, is a ceremony in
which locals drink down live, squirming fish soaked in red wine.
The gray fish, known
as grondeling, are about an inch long, but some years they're
bigger and more difficult to drink down.
"Sometimes they are
still trembling a little in your mouth," Guido de Padt, a former mayor of
Geraardsbergen, told the International Herald Tribune in
March. "You don't taste them -- but the wine is good."
The ceremony enrages
animal rights campaigners who say the fish die an agonizing death. Their
protests have succeeded so far in whittling down the number of people permitted
to drink fish to around two dozen. They hope to eradicate the pageant one day
or to have the fish replaced by fish-shaped marzipan.
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