Kölle Alaaf!

And now we come to Rosenmontag. Crazy, crazy Rosenmontag. Rosenmontag is the monday before Ash Wednesday, and in Germany is the main Karneval day (as opposed to Tuesday in France). As I've mentioned before, this is the day most towns hold their parades and major parties, and the celebration in Koeln is by far the largest. There are usually well over 1 million people lining the streets for the parade and probably at least 5 or 6 times that many broken beer bottles. I've never been to Mardi Gras in New Orleans, but I imagine the two are probably comparable in terms of rowdiness and drunkenness, although with more costumes and less nudity in Koeln. The teachers at the Goethe-Institute all warned us that Koeln on Rosenmontag was not necessarily the safest place to be, but we figured that if we were only 20 kilometers away from the biggest Karneval festival in Germany, we really ought to go. So we took the train from Bad Godesberg crammed in among a variety of witches, medieval knights, hippies, cowboys, and animals. It was probably the most bizarre train ride I've ever been on. When we arrived at the Koeln train station and exited the platform we literally descended into a madhouse. The entire station was absolutely packed with revelers, slowly funneling themselves through the exits. We finally made it out of the station and began our search for a spot along the parade route.

The amount of people on the streets was absolutely unbelievable, made even more unbelievable by the fact that everyone was in costume. Unfortunately since we had gotten a late start out of Bad Godesberg we weren't able to find any good spots along the parade route due to the crowds. After lots of wandering we finally found a spot that wasn't right next to the route, but we could still see some of the floats and we weren't absolutely squished. We hung out, drank beer and ate sausage, and befriended a group of very drunken 20-something-year-old guys all wearing nun costumes. They were fun to sing and dance with, but when one of them started to pee on the street we decided it was time to find new friends.

After we tired of the parade (though it wasn't over yet---it lasted for 3-4 hours in total) we headed to the "Rhein Promenade", an area on the banks of the Rhein where there are lots of restaurants, bars and clubs. Everything was of course completely packed, but we did manage to get a table at a cafe and hang out for a little bit. Afterwards we contemplated going to a "disko" (dance club), but decided we weren't up to the task of dealing with the drunken Koelner, so we just went home.

I should probably explain a little more about some of the Rosenmontag traditions. The title of this post (Kölle Alaaf!) is the traditional Karneval greeting in Koeln, and in Koelsch (the dialect spoken in Koeln) it means approximately "up with Cologne!" or "long live Cologne!" So everywhere you went on Rosenmontag you would hear people shouting this to each other or at the people on the floats. This phrase is also the chorus to one of the most popular Karneval songs, which brings me to the topic of the ridiculous "Karnevalslieder." These are songs that are played every year at Karneval time (at least in Cologne), even though some of them aren't explicitly about Karneval, but just about partying in general. The probably with the songs are that they are very catchy (the Germans call a catchy song an "Ohrwurm", literally meaning "ear worm") and there are really only about 5 that are frequently played, which means you hear the same five songs over and over and over and over for the entire week. At one point we literally walked down the street for 10 minutes and heard nothing but 1 song, because every time we got out of range of one set of speakers we would reach another, which was playing the same song. To this day I cannot get these songs out of my head, so in order to share my pain, I'll share with y'all some links so you can hear what I had to go through. Of course they're in German (actually most of them are in Koelsch), so you won't understand the lyrics, but that's ok because they basically are all along the lines of "We live in Koeln and we're awesome! We like to party and drink all the time! Koeln is the best! Long live Koeln!" Oh, and most of songs are sung by old guys who used to be rockers back in the day. Enjoy!

Viva Colonia (definitely the most important in Cologne)

Superjeile Zick (a true classic)

Et wenn dat Troemmelche jeht (aka Koelle Alaaf)

Pizza Wunderbar

Cowboy und Indianer (there's a pretty sweet dance that goes with this one. Caroline and I learned it by heart of course)

I think that about covers it for Karneval, so check out the pictures and look forward to my next post about a new topic! Unfortunately you'll have to wait a bit for that, because tomorrow I'm leaving to go on a retreat thing in some village with the people from my "Deutsch-Kompakt" language course, so I'll be without internet until Friday. Bis dann!



Insane crowds in and out of the train station


literally EVERYBODY was in costume (though most were more excited than that kid there)


I can never get those two to be normal. Of course we're all a little special in these pictures.


I have to say, the floats were better in the Koeln parade than in Bad Godesberg. Though some were actually kind of weird and creepy (see exhibit A on the right).



Anybody want a balloon?

De simmer dabei, dat ist prima! VIVA COLONIA!!!



Many of the floats are quite political, such as this one about a guy killing himself because (according to the side of the float) "the prices are shooting into the sky." In the picture on the right the people in the red wigs and wetsuits were part of some promotion for a restaurant. There were tons of them all over, giving out free samples. Unfortunately the free samples were bits of cold herring (still with scales) wrapped around pickles. I refused to eat them.


Finally off our feet at the cafe. ---A pretty typical sight on Rosenmontag.