Smashing pumpkins: Annual squash festival draws thousands to Brussels castle

A castle next to Brussels is holding its annual pumpkin festival. There are so many pumpkins around the castle that no one knows the exact number, even the organizer. A lot, a lot. We have lorries coming with pumpkins, pumpkins and pumpkins. Pumpkins were gathered not only from Belgium but also all the way from Portugal or Germany. A lot from Belgium, we have in the region of Ghent, farmers producing those big ones as well. The biggest one is right next to me, weighing 772 kilograms. They seem like surreal. We have our own pumpkins at home and we have a really big one and it's this size and then we see this. Some of the big pumpkins were also turned into boats despite the harvest not being the greatest due to the hot summer. Yeah the pumpkin is pretty pretty fun. The kayak is just that maybe you cannot go further but yeah it's also pretty tough to kayak on it. But so people like that and they put their baby in the water in the pumpkin and they take pictures. Sailing in a pumpkin is not the only activity. The most popular one is pumpkin carving, as everyone is preparing for Halloween. You have to follow what the pumpkin suggests you. You have a shape, and this is a big constraint, and actually you just play with it. He makes 2-3 works per day, with the one that he is holding in his hands taking around 2 hours. But those who attend the festival are also going for easier designs. It's actually surprisingly easier than I expected, you know, but I can see that a lot of people go for really intricate designs and I think we will just keep it as simple as possible We've been here longer than everyone else so far and we're not done yet But it's really it's really fun. It's not that hard With the tools, we start to drill, to make the shapes and all that, it's a bit of all that. We have examples, we didn't use them, we made them ourselves because it's more creative. The festival will be running until the beginning of November.