Viva Colonia... Karneval in Koeln!

Well this blog is a bit overdue, but better late than never. I will start out this blog by saying that since coming to Bonn, all I have heard about is Karneval. It is not all over Germany, it is basically just in Bonn, Cologne and Dusseldorf (to my knowledge). The Karneval season started on 11/11/11 and concluded the Tuesday before ash Wednesday, so in basic terms it is this area's version of Mardi Gras. So everyone is off of work and school basically from the Thursday to the Tuesday. Everyone dresses up in costumes and has parades (definite perk of German parades is that they throw German chocolate.... yummm) drinks copious amounts of Koelsch Beer, and sings Karneval songs. I will link 2 pretty-famous Karneval songs if anyone wants to here, I definitely heard both of these songs about 3 times a day during the duration of Karneval (they are really cheesy, but that seemed to be the trend of Karneval songs)

The second one that I posted is definitely the anthem of the Cologne Karneval.... I dont know if anyone will enjoy them, but just a taste of what everyone was singing.

So first things first was Thursday, which was Frauenkarneval, or women's carneval. Basically in Bonn, the women are allowed to cut off the men's ties as a sign of equality and anti-authority. But.... instead of staying in Bonn we went to Cologne. The trains were packed to the brim when we left at 10 am.

Here we are straight off of the train ride. Costume and all. My costume was "Fitness-Frau" which is not exactly a german word, but I loved the alliteration and so I was saying it all day long, much to the enjoyment of the Germans around me. 

The theme of Karneval this year was "Mehr Spass ohne Glas" which just means have more fun without glass... so leave it to the Germans to have a celebration also remind everyone to be environmentally friendly.

Once we got past the checkpoints, the streets were just packed with people, and this was not even the parade day. It was if the entire city had come out for the day to celebrate... which more likely than not was the case.

You cannot quite tell, but this person is wearing a Brown's jersey, so I made him to an O-H with me

And I had to take a picture with a Lederhosen man!

The following Monday we did a similar adventure back to Cologne to watch the parade

The weather, although really sunny, was really really cold... but everyone's spirits were high. Right now we are in front of the Dom and the train station and people were already congregating here and singing and dancing in the early part of the day

Here is a video of the parade a bit. To be honest I have not watched this video, but there should be some music in it and people singing and yelling. I definitely learned some words in the Koelsh dialect during Karneval. Kamelle is candy, which everyone yells when the floats pass!

Some sassy Germans next to us did not want us getting any of the chocolate, so whenever we managed to get a piece it was so thrilling!

The crowds were sooo big, I felt as if we must be in the most crowded part of the city, but we actually were at one of the least dense areas.

By about 3 or 4 we were already pooped and had to take a break from the crowds for a bit. Rest our voices too from all of the singing ;)

This guy wins the award for me of the best costume I saw all weekend, although I did see a lot of... eh, creative we will say, costumes

Here are pictures of odds and ends from the weekend

Look on the light post and you will see a man perched on top

If you are maybe wondering what the tattoos on my face are (they are permanent of course), that is the symbol of Cologne. As I learned with the rest of my family, the 3 crowns are the 3 kings (as in the biblical ones) and the 11 tears are the 11 women who did something important of which I cannot remember at this moment in time.

 Our Karneval vantage point

people were EVERYWHERE

Me being happy in front of the Dom

Curious.... curious indeed

Here is a nice picture of a lot of the people who I went with

goofy train track photo

This is a good view of the entire street packed with people (although it was on Thursday, so not as crowded)

I feel like this picture says it all... we are hip, we are cool, we are celebrating Karneval.

A quick side. It is a tradition in Europe to eat pancakes on Fat Tuesday, which also happens to be international pancake day (who knew?) so it was a nice way to end the weekend. We all hung out in an apartment and made pancakes all afternoon!

Like I said yesterday, expect silence from me for a little bit now, but I will talk to you again after Portugal!