Viva Colonia!

Karneval is one of the most ridiculous things I’ve experienced in Germany.  Karneval – the pre-Lenten party/Mardi Gras – actually begins on Nov. 11 and is basically the biggest cultural event NRW has to offer; its epicenter is Köln. Divya, another American assistant in the area, was offered her landlady’s sister’s apartment for the weekend, so we all headed down to Köln to see the madness.

The Detmold lot (Rebecca, Jen, Luke and I) arrived on Saturday. It should be noted that the “real” Karneval events are Thursday, Weiberfastnacht/Women’s Day, and Monday, Rosenmontag, when there is a huge parade in Köln. Saturday, when we went out, was nothing special, but this didn’t stop the whole city from dressing up in extremely elaborate costumes, drinking in the streets, going to bars and clubs well before a normal going-out time, and dancing crazily to German hits the entire night.

Here’s what I found so wonderful about all this:

1.     To make a sweeping generalization, and in my opinion, Germans don’t often get too riled up or excited about things. Football is one thing they’ll go crazy for, and apparently Karneval is another. In this calm, orderly, sometimes downright boring-seeming country, it was amazing to see everyone let their hair down, put a ton of effort into their costumes, and be completely ridiculous.

2.     I’ve never ever ever heard so much crappy German music in a bar – they usually play American/British/Australian stuff, and while I love having good music to dance to, it is sometimes sad how they don’t pull from their own culture to party. Karneval is again the exception – the music was terrible, as a lot of German pop is, but it was amazing to see everyone get so excited about it. I also learned the Kölner Karneval song (Viva Colonia), which is incredibly fun to sing/scream along to with a bunch of Germans.

3.     I saw yet another example of Germans dealing with alcohol responsibly: people walking around the streets of Köln with glass bottles were stopped, given a plastic cup to pour their beer in, and shown a glass deposit container where they could toss the empty bottle. Safe, practical, keeps up the tradition of recycling, and let’s the party go on.

The unfortunate flipside to this whole weekend is that I was rather sick (though the fortunate flipside of that is that I didn’t really drink and thus saved a bit of cash). So, this weekend was not only an introduction to German Karneval Kultur, but also my first full attempt at curing myself German-style. This meant a lot of fruit juice, oranges, heiße Zitronen – lemon and honey with hot water – tea, the strange homeopathic salts that I’m convinced prevented me from being sick over Thanksgiving weekend, and some plant-based decongestant. Plus a lot of sleep.