karneval
Last Sunday I walked over to the Kudamm to see the Karneval parade. Karneval (Carnival, or Fasching, or Fastnacht) is basically Mardi Gras, only it's not just Fat Tuesday here. It depends where you are in Germany--it's huge in the Rheinland, especially Cologne--but here it started on Sunday, and then yesterday was Rose Monday. People dress up in costume--lots of wigs and homemade outfits--mostly, I think, as an excuse for being allowed to put rum in their hot chocolate at 10:30 am.
Here's everybody milling around, waiting for the parade to start:
The little white-tented huts (set up on the same square where that giant Christmas market was, you may remember) are selling bratwurst and various other chunks of grilled meat, also beer and cocktails and the aforementioned spiked hot chocolate.
Here's how narrow the people-lined street is:
And here's how big the floats in the parade are:
There are no paltry balloon-covered pickups involved here; most of the floats are on semi trailers. Which means the people on them are up pretty high, which means the candy they throw lands not on the pavement but on the heads of the crowd. This becomes particularly entertaining when they throw full-size chocolate bars. People hold open umbrellas upside-down for optimal candy-catching, with the added benefit of the extra head protection.
I was standing in front of the EMT truck, helping the rest of the crowd to block it in because getting the most candy is more important than saving lives, and one of the emergency response volunteers, a girl probably 16 years old, was sitting in the driver's seat window taking pictures of the parade. Everyone on the floats who saw her immediately pelted her with candy, trying to make handfuls of it through the window into the truck. Since she was basically sitting just over my shoulder, I got caught in some crossfire, but at least the kids standing in front of me scored a pretty big take as a result.
There are also lots of girls in these fluffy skirts marching in the parade and sometimes forming can-can kick lines:
The weather was gorgeously sunny, and I made it out with minimal cranial damage, so I'd call it a Sunday morning well spent.
Here's everybody milling around, waiting for the parade to start:
The little white-tented huts (set up on the same square where that giant Christmas market was, you may remember) are selling bratwurst and various other chunks of grilled meat, also beer and cocktails and the aforementioned spiked hot chocolate.Here's how narrow the people-lined street is:
And here's how big the floats in the parade are:
There are no paltry balloon-covered pickups involved here; most of the floats are on semi trailers. Which means the people on them are up pretty high, which means the candy they throw lands not on the pavement but on the heads of the crowd. This becomes particularly entertaining when they throw full-size chocolate bars. People hold open umbrellas upside-down for optimal candy-catching, with the added benefit of the extra head protection.
I was standing in front of the EMT truck, helping the rest of the crowd to block it in because getting the most candy is more important than saving lives, and one of the emergency response volunteers, a girl probably 16 years old, was sitting in the driver's seat window taking pictures of the parade. Everyone on the floats who saw her immediately pelted her with candy, trying to make handfuls of it through the window into the truck. Since she was basically sitting just over my shoulder, I got caught in some crossfire, but at least the kids standing in front of me scored a pretty big take as a result.There are also lots of girls in these fluffy skirts marching in the parade and sometimes forming can-can kick lines:
The weather was gorgeously sunny, and I made it out with minimal cranial damage, so I'd call it a Sunday morning well spent.Labels: Berlin life
