It has been some time since I realized that the best you can do to live in any city, is enjoying it as local people do. And that is exactly what I am trying to do since I got my Erasmus position. So, what do locals do in October? There was no doubt about it since I started asking everyone: looking for a mask (and a ticket as well) for the MAS[KED] party.
Yes, I said a ticket also, because you need to look for one of those precious tickets that allow you to be one in 2300 people invited to this event. This time, thanks to This Is Antwerp and Kavka, I can tell you in first person how it was.
Asking what MAS[KED] is, makes a lot of sense. Nobody can imagine how it is until you get in. This was the description I got before going to the party: "a gala party with Venetian masks in the MAS museum".
And a party it was, indeed! Everyone’s dressed up posh, and you need a mask (if it is venetian or not depends on you) and it takes place inside the MAS museum. Which is the most shocking thing of all: it’s a party inside a museum! With masks. In the middle of October. When it’s not carnival time, not even in Cologne.
I did not understand what all this was about, but due to the fact that it was the 5th edition and since the 2300 tickets were sold out the previous day, it was for sure something I had to live. As I said before, thank you very much This Is Antwerp and for giving me the chance to do so.
Everything was very well organized. After leaving our coats in the free closets we could enjoy the whole program of this event, which included 8 hours of non-stop partying on the 8 floors of the MAS, but it was only in the floors 2, 4, 6 and 8 where the DJs and artists performed. On the other floors there were enough bartenders for the people not to wait in queue for a long time, keeping in mind that you should buy tokens first to pay for what you wanted to drink.
The masks, some of them were homemade some bought, but everybody was wearing one for this masquerade, even if they were not Venetian masks. Throughout the night, the different floors closed one by one, starting from the 8th floor, till the end of this 5th edition of MAS[KED], and probably not the last one, according to the hit it happens to be.
At first sight it was a party inside a museum, something so strange for me and something that, for now, I have only lived here in Antwerp. But actually it was more than this: there were more activities and, for example, you could have found me between 8pm and 1pm looking for this fluorescent wristbands that were hidden through the exposition, with different colours on each floor, that stated that you had visited that floor.
This is how got young people visiting the museum and its expositions, and at the same time got them enjoying a party.
Text and pics by Alejandro Marcos Rodrigo
This blogpost is also available in Spanish, on