You notice it everywhere. The street decorations are back. Flags flutter, arches stand upright and colours appear throughout the village, telling you that it is nearly time.
There is a buzz in Sint Nyk.
Cycle or walk through the village in the evening and you hear music here and there. Things are being tested. Laughter comes from behind a sliding door; farther on, there is the sound of a grinder or a paint sprayer. Work continues in the building sheds. There is always something that still needs finishing, a detail that can be better or a piece of technology that must be tested one more time.
Yet there is one unwritten rule everyone observes.
At ten o'clock on the first Thursday of September, the float is finished.
Then the doors open. Tension gives way to pride. Months of building, puzzling, improvising and working together come together as the first float turns into the street. It is no longer a secret behind a shed door, but a story travelling through the village.
That may be the finest thing about the Allegorical Parade. Not only the creativity of the floats, but the feeling of an entire village living towards the same moment for weeks. Everyone knows the secrets, but nobody gives them away. Everyone hears the music, sees the activity and feels that it is nearly time.
In the days before the parade, there is a saying you often hear in Sint Nyk:
Us Lieve Hear is in Sint Nykster.
Loosely translated: our dear Lord is from Sint Nyk.
It is said with a smile, of course. Perhaps it helps that St Nicholas Church has watched over the village for centuries, as if keeping an eye on things from above. There is no proof, but good stories need not always be confined by facts.
Miraculously, the parade has often enjoyed beautiful weather over the years. As if the sun knows that the village has been working towards this day for months.
Even so, people always keep one eye on the forecast. Not in panic, but with a mixture of hope and trust. Older residents still know the story of that long-ago year when the weather was so bad that the parade was postponed until Saturday. When Saturday proved impossible too, it did not take place at all. It was so exceptional that the story is still told.
Perhaps that is precisely what makes the saying so lovely. It is based not on certainty, but on experience. On decades in which things somehow turned out well.
So when the forecast looks gloomy a few days beforehand, someone will undoubtedly shrug and say:
Us Lieve Hear is in Sint Nykster.
There is a buzz in Sint Nyk.
And in a few days everyone will understand why.