Carnival

My roommate, Caitie and I went to Cologne, Germany this past weekend for Carnival. Her friend, Hayden, also met us there.

Carnival is similar to Mardi Gras. It starts Wednesday before Ash Wednesday and is just one big party for the entire week. We showed up in Cologne late Thursday night and were greeted at the train station by two very drunk Uncle Sams (everyone wears costumes for the entire week). Since we arrived really late, we went straight to our hotel to rest up for the rest of the weekend.

We pretty much just spent the weekend walking around Cologne. The city was beautiful. In the center, right in front of the train station, is a huge, gorgeous cathedral.

If you walk to the left of the cathedral, you enter the old city. This was the most beautiful part of the city. It's right on the Rhine and it's all stereotypical German pubs. This is where we spent the days. We would walk along the Rhine and enjoy the sunshine and then stop into whatever pub looked interesting. The pubs tended to consist of an older crowd standing around, drinking beer, singing and dancing to German folk music. They were so fun. Plus, the beer was delicious. In Cologne, everyone drinks Kolsch. It's a very very light beer that is served in a tall glass instead of a stein. Everyone drinks it like water because it's so light. In fact, water was more expensive than Kolsch, and super hard to find. When we did find water, it was all sparkling water; flat water didn't really exist in Germany.

The old city

The Rhine

The pubs

Me with my first Kolsch

If you walk to the right of the cathedral, you enter the new city. This consists of lots of shopping and clubs. The crowd in this part of the city was much younger, so this is where we spent the evenings. All of the streets were lined with modern shops and then in the squares there were bars set up. People would congregate around these at night and drink Kolsch between clubs.

On Sunday, Caitie and I ran into a really cool parade. It consisted of some floats and a lot of marching bands. The costumes were very intricate and every band played the same song, which happened to be the same song we heard every five minutes in the pubs. We asked our Austrian roommate about it when we got home and it turns out that this song is buy a really famous singer that comes from Cologne, so the locals go crazy about it.

German man dressed up a Canadian watching the parade

A band of rats

Cheerleaders

This was the last float. The corner was a little tight and it got stuck so the guards had to push the crowd back.