Karneval Time

Hello there,
I was just sitting in my dorm doing nothing in particular, so decided to regale you all with another wordy, incoherent rant about my current adventures here in Germany. Basically, since I last wrote a month or so ago, there have not been many noteworthy events to speak of, in fact, little at all. That was until Karnival time hit the Rheinland, and everything got a little weird.

For those who don't know, every year in the week leading up to Ash Wednesday, the normally respectable and sensible citizens of the Rheinland go absolutely batty for 7 days, and everything grinds to a screeching, drunken stop. While Dortmund itself is not reknown for its embracing of the Karneval spirit, the nearby cities of Cologne and Düsseldorf go all out every year to out do each other in the drunken, debauched, costumed party stakes. So naturally, given that I had a long weekend with not many other plans, I decided to get into the spirit of things.

After spending Friday night in Bochum for a friend's farewell party, and Saturday in my cellar for yet another Bulgarian party (seriously, my building has twice as many Bulgarians as Germans), I caught the train to Düsseldorf for what I thought would be a few quiet beers before the main event of Rosenmontag the next day in Cologne. Now the Old Town of Düsseldorf is usually a delighfully well maintained, beautiful place to go for a tipple, but last Sunday the cobble stone streets were absolutely packed with crazily dressed, incredibly drunk, jovial sounding people drinking themselves into oblivion blissfully unaware of (or choosing to ignore) the piles upon piles of broken glass, wild punch ups and general anarchy. Naturally this sort of behaviour greatly interests me, and I found myself sticking around the city for more than a few hours to observe the locals in action. I ended up getting a train back to Dortmund at a rather late hour, having to explain (once again) to a bunch of disbelieving drunken Germans at the platform that I actually didn't come from Holland, I just sound like a Dutchman when I speak German. Seriously, the first time this happened I thought it was quite funny, but nowadays not a single weekend goes by without someone asking what I, as a 'Sheißholländer' am doing in Germany. I guess there aren't many Aussies in Germany, so when they hear my accent, they recognise that it's not British, it's not American, so it must be..... DUTCH! Very weird, and a little disconcerting at the same time.

Anyway, I woke up bright and early on Monday morning, and put on my 'costume', which consisted of a huge black novelty wig, a rather large, yellow, gaudy ring, a giant metal bat on a necklace around my neck, and a borrowed leather jacket, I wandered down to the budget supermarket with some english mates of mine to stock up on supplies (read a 5euro bottle of vodka and some cans of imitation red bull), before getting a tube to the Hauptbahnhof for our train to Cologne. As the 90 minute trip through the Ruhr Valley progressed, more and more drunken Germans piled into the train (it was still 11 am mind you), and by half way, the train was resembling one of those trains you see on the telly in India, but with more alcohol and slightly more Elvis impersonators. When we finallly arrived in Cologne, we found a nice spot by the side of the parade and watched a few floats pass us by. It sort of reminded me of a twisted parody of the Christmas Pageant in Adelaide, with quite normal looking floats being followed by quite scary ones, all of which also involved a lot of assorted chocolate being thrown into the audience to the back up music of cheesy german disco hits. (think: heeey baby.....ooh..... ahh.. I wanna know.....) You know the song. There are many more even more irritating songs just like it over here. Well, after an hour or so of this, we wandered down a side street and started chatting with many different characters, all well inebriated and dressed in Darth Vader, Storm Trooper (the star wars kind, not the other somewhat 'tainted' ones from 60 years ago...), Gladiator and all sorts of other costumes. We ended up talking to some drunken schoolkids dressed as scottish Braveheart warriors and the Grim Reaper, as well many assorted other people, some more memorable than others. Anyway, after a few hours drinking in the sub zero temperatures, my memories of monday evening have dimmed slightly, although I do remember flailing my arms wildly in what could loosely be described as 'dancing' with some japanese tourist in a wedding dress, before going to McDonalds, where all of the people behind the counter were the guys who usually work on the grill in the back of shop. Now not only was that a bit different, but all of these blokey blokes were all dressed immaculaltely in drag, and seeming to be enjoying the whole experience. I somehow don't think you'll ever see that at the West Tce Maccas anytime soon.

Anyway, since I actually had to be at school the next morning teaching some German kids the wonders of adverbs and the conditional tense, I got a train home at about 9, getting home at about 11, before falling into a deep sleep having nightmares of an army of punks whose heads were bigger than their bodies. I can only guess that after this week of drunken hilarity and spontaneous fun and openness, the Germans will pack all their enthusiasm and Lebenslust into storage for another year. What a funny folk they are.