For the history of Karneval in Köln, please visit the website below. It is too much information for me to copy and then cite...
http://www.koeln.de/tourism/carnival/2000_years_of_carnival_97617.html
I guess I left you with a very quick breakdown of everything we did this week and maybe a sneak peak into the first couple of days back in Köln. Indeed, we arrived in the city on Feb. 22 just in time for the upswing of the Karneval parties. Our plan was to check into the hotel, drop off our suitcases and other junk, then return the car to the airport. I figure it was easier driving the extra mileage to drop off our stuff instead of dragging it from the airport onto two different trains and then walking to our hotel. It paid off in dividends. We even found the hotel AND the airport with the shoddy Dumb-Dumb. I was very happy to return that piece of poorly engineered machinery to Avis. I have not looked back since...
Once we made it back to the hotel, I called my friend, Patrick, and set up a time to meet at the hotel that evening so we could go out and experience the Karneval mystique of barhopping and clubbing... and openly drinking on the trains and streets. Patrick came by and brought some costumes for us to wear and brought some face paint for us to decorate our faces with flowers and such. In the southern part of the country, such as Munich, face masques are used to scare away the spirits from the cities. You'll find these masques at Mardi Gras parties in New Orleans and other such places as well. Scott and I bought a couple of these masques to wear for Karneval, but to our naivete, cities in the northern part of Germany (especially in Köln), Karneval is more whimsical. They dress in clown costumes, disco pants, face paint, Köln tattoos, pirate outfits, Ghostbuster costumes, etc. I saw some very, very creative outfits which were considered very normal for that time of year. Patrick gave Scott a sailor's uniform to wear (just the top part), and he gave me an oversized blue and white horizontally striped t-shirt. Indeed, both were his own uniforms from years past. Patrick is very tall but not quite so wide, so I was curious to see if the sailor shirt would fit Scott over his jacket. Well, it did. Barely... as pictures will show LOL.
Patrick brought a couple of beers for us to drink on our way to the southern part of the city, and he bought another one from a small store on the way to the subway. He told us drinking is legal on the streets, trains, buses year-round but is not considered appropriate except during Karneval. We grabbed the train near our hotel and headed south. All the while, more Karnevalers were getting on the train dressed in outlandish costumes and just having a great time. I got used to it very quickly and knew the night was going to be a blast. Patrick said the tourists who come to Köln for Karneval spend their nights in the Alstadt district of the city. He said local Kölners avoid this part of the city like the plague during Karneval and head to the southern part of the city for the parties and such.
We stopped off at a bar and partook in some Kölsch bier and some Jagermeister. When in Germany, drink as Germans do I guess LOL. Scott tipped our bar server like he normally would in the states, but apparently in Germany, they tip much less. The bar server was very surprised at a 2 Euro tip that Scott kept giving him... he said he felt bad not giving the guy a good tip. Patrick and I laughed at him and then continued to drink our bier. Mmmmm....
From there, we walked to a club just down the street and walked right in. I distinctly remember a line outside the club for revelers waiting for entry into the club, but all three of us just walked inside. Patrick just shrugged his shoulders and said if they were not checking, you might as well just walk in... hahaha. This club was packed with a ton of people and they played an equal amount of German and American songs here. I could not see the faces of any of these people because most of them wore wigs, painted their faces, were wearing crazy glasses, etc... and their costumes were great. At this point, language was no issue. It was just a matter of drinking your bier, laughing, dancing, and just having a good time. Photos will speak the rest... Scott and I managed to get back to the hotel without any trouble (except Scott had us get off a stop too early for us to switch trains...good thing I still had a decent part of mind left to get us home LOL).
The next day, Rosenmontag (Rose Monday) began and, of course, the big parade as well. The parade had 111 entries which included Karneval clubs dating back to the mid 19th century. Patrick said it would take approximately 6 hours for the parade to run through in its entirety. It was a class of its own by far. I was absolutely amazed at the sheer number of people who attened the parade, the costumes they were wearing, how drunk they were by noon, the parade entries, and the amount of candy and flowers they threw from the floats. There were numerous grandstands erected along the parade route and cost quite a bit of money to reserve a seat on one of them. Patrick said it could range from 50-100 Euro for one seat... eek. The majority of the floats were mostly political and I could not understand any of them without Patrick's help. There was one, however, I could grasp as it had a huge presentation of President Obama's head. He is quite popular in Germany...
All three of us watched the parade for over an hour and caught some Kamelle (candy) but no flowers. Patrick had to go home early and Scott and I decided it would be quite painful to stand for 6 hours without drinking alcohol to ease the leg pain, so we decided to head back to the hotel as well. We were still recovering from the night before and had no intentions of drinking that Monday (I hate recovery). The city absolutely shuts down on Monday and nothing is open except bars, small shops, etc. We watched the rest of the parade on T.V. and just relaxed because we knew we had a very busy touring week ahead of us in Köln.
Next post... the rest of the week!
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