If you’re reading the title of this post in utter confusion, don’t worry — most Germans would feel the same way. About a million years ago, back in September or so, I posted about my first trip to Cologne and was amused by the idea of Kölsch, the dialect spoken in Cologne, actually being its own language. To be fair, to my very green ears, most German that wasn’t spoken at a speed of about five words per minute sounded like total gibberish, so the finer differences between Hochdeutsch and Kölsch were totally lost on me at that point. But by February when I started brushing up on my Karnevalslieder, it was very clear that the latter was a whole different animal. And in March came Karneval!
Actually, that’s not entirely true. Karneval officially begins every year on the eleventh of November at 11:11 AM (I bet it’s going to be an extra big deal this year on 11/11/11!), takes a break over the Christmas holidays and starts up again sometime in January or February. I went to the Galasitzung in my village in February, and no, I will not tell you what my costume was. It was pretty fun, I got to know some of the people in my village better, and it whetted my appetite for the Straßenkarneval, which is the part that happens in March.
Of course, after looking forward to this all year, I got Achilles tendonitis the week before and spent the first day of Karneval, and spent Weiberfastnacht (Karneval Thursday) on the couch. The happy part of this is that I got to be at home while my host parents and their friend Susanne got ready to go out, and it was a very festive mood!
Pretty spiffy costumes, eh? That Friday, my friend Kate (the one who lives in Stuttgart) showed up, since, unlike mine, her region isn’t particularly well known for its great Karneval celebrations. We did some exploring around the town where I go to school, baked chocolate chip cookies, played lots of card/board games with Mona, aaand experienced Karneval in Cologne twice!
The highlight of Karneval is Rosenmontag, or “Rose Monday.” We got up early so that we would have a good place from which to watch the parade. Luckily, Gaby and Tobi have friends with a shop right along the route, so we got to stand outside of it and always had a place to go inside and warm up if necessary, which it was, since the parade is around five hours long.
We wore different costumes on Monday, except for Tobi, the eternal knight. I am a meadow, in case you’re wondering.
Since we got there so early, we had lots of time to roam the streets and take pictures with people with interesting costumes! (I stole a bunch of these from Kate, since they were pretty much all on her camera.)
Even more impressive than the many creative costumes were the floats during the parade. Many of them made political statements, like this one, a protest against the proposed “Stuttgart 21″ train station. They were really amazing!
After Kate left on Monday night, Karneval was still not quite over. On Tuesday, my Dorf put on its own parade! Tobi and I went to watch Gabi and the other angels here in the village. I have no good photos from the parade, but here’s one of my favorites, the lovely Andrea, at the “after-party.”
Unfortunately, am Aschermittwoch war alles vorbei. (On Ash Wednesday, it was all over!) And of course, that’s all a good two months ago now. But I can look back and say, nä, wat wor dat dann fröher en superjeile Zick. A very loose translation: good times!
Wunderbar (or however you spell that) costumes Margarooo! That looks very wacky and fun and I love that it lasts for five months! xoxo na