Eurotimes launches a new feature to give readers a look at upcoming cultural events around Europe and the rest of the world.

LILLE, FRANCE
Lille is celebrating becoming a "European Capital of Culture" by bursting into colour. All year, Lille Flandres station will be lit up in pink, the lights changing as each train arrives; buy a drink and the vending machine will illuminate you in green or yellow. Hundreds of events throughout the
Nord-Pas de Calais region include an upside-down forest suspended overhead, art exhibitions such as Flower Power, featuring works ranging from the 17th century to Andy Warhol and Jeff Koons. During the year, Lille will exhibit 30 "parallel worlds", when the city will transform its streets and squares into foreign places with concerts and festivals. New York, China, Buenos Aires and Japan are all promised. www.lille2004.com

CARNIVAL
Rio de Janeiro
(21-24 February, www.ipanema.com) is the carnival by which all others are judged but many others have been inspired by its samba rhythms and outrageous costumes.
Venice (6-24 February, www.carnivalofvenice.com) has chosen the works of film director Federico Fellini as a theme this year.

As usual, New Orleans(www.neworleanscvb.com) will say "farewell to the flesh" with about 70 parades over 12 days culminating on Fat Tuesday (24 February) before the fasting of Lent. For those who want to get lean more quickly, the Mardi Gras marathon (www.mardigrasmarathon.com) is run on Sunday 29 February through the French Quarter and other historic neighbourhoods of the flat city, to finish at the Louisiana Superdome.

SCOTLAND
The Shetland Islands north of Scotland set fire to their new year – and a Viking longship – at the ancient festival of Up Helly Aa
(www.up-helly-aa.org.uk). The capital Lerwick (www.visitshetland.com) sets the pace with a procession of a thousand flaming torches before the revellers or "guizers", many dressed as Vikings in winged or horned helmets and sheepskins, fall to riotous drinking and dancing far into the night. It may be easier to get a party invitation at one of the smaller Up Helly Aas in February: Nesting and Girlsta (6th), Uyeasound on Unst (13th); Norwick or Northmavine (both 20th), or Bressay or Cullivoe in Yell (both 27th).

SRI LANKA
For one night in February the Sri Lankan capital of Colombo becomes the elephant capital for NavamPerahera (15-16 February, www.srilankatourism.org). The celebration of this Buddhist festival only dates from 1979, but thousands of people throng the streets during February's full moon to see 100 gorgeously-decorated elephants from all over the island join a procession of a thousand performers at the Gangaramaya temple (www.gangarama.lk) on the banks of the Beira lake. Whip-crackers start the show, followed by children with flags, people blowing conch shells, stilt-walkers, flute-players and drummers: the noise is overwhelming, the sight unforgettable.


JAPAN
The Snow Festival (5-11 February, www.snowfes.com) held in Sapporo on Japan's northern island of Hokkaido every year, unfailingly astounds visitors with the size and extravagance of its ice sculptures. Some are several storeys high. Jaws drop as people take in the perfect detail of replicas of world famous buildings. Some of these monuments in snow are made by citizens of Sapporo (not for nothing is the city's motto "Boys be ambitious"), while others are created by internationally renowned ice-artists. Those used to thinking of the Japanese as reserved will see a different side to the locals as they drink warmed sake from little wooden boxes sold at street stalls and share other hot delicacies.   (www.jnto.go.jp)


INDIA
Who's got the longest moustache?, is one of the questions answered at the Desert Festival held every year in the Rajasthani city of Jaisalmer, on the edge of the Thar desert. Contenders for the title of fastest camel gather here to race, while chukkas at the Dedansar Polo Groundare also
played on camels during the three-day festival
(4-6 February, www.indiatouristoffice.org). Musicians, acrobats, puppeteers and jugglers, their clothes flashing with traditionally
embroidered mirrors, swarm through the narrow streets around the majestic golden fort perched on Trikuta Hill, and the secrets arts of folding the yards of material into an elegant headpiece are revealed in the turban-tying competition.

EGYPT
Get up before the sun on 22 February and join the crowds squeezed inside Abu Simbel temple in Egypt. Built by Ramses II some 12 centuries before Christ to intimidate the ancient Nubians, the temple was moved to higher ground in the 1960s to save it from the rising waters caused by the creation of the Aswan dam. So the first shafts of light at dawn which strike the inner sanctum of the huge sandstone temple twice a year - on the pharaoh's birthday and the anniversary of his taking the throne – now light up the statues of Ramses, and the gods Ra and Amun a day later than Ramses planned.
(www.egypttourism.org)

SWEDEN
Santa Claus may be long gone, but there's still time to hitch a lift in a reindeer taxi at the festival to Sami culture in Jokkmokk in northern Sweden (5-7 February, www.jokkmokksmarknad.com). The Sami, often known as Lapps, are nomads who still wander round the Arctic Circle with little regard for national boundaries. This year's gathering is a curtain-raiser for next year's, the 400th such festival. The Sami will teach you how to build an igloo, drive a dog-sled or snowmobile and take you on a moose-safari through the icy landscape where, if you're lucky, you might glimpse the
Northern Lights. (www.visit-sweden.com)

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