My adventure in ALEMANIA, la cuarta parte. --The Germans celebrate the beginning of Lent! Orrrrr Mardi Gras? The beginning(ish) of spring? the week? Sunday?

I always start out these posts really ambitiously, planning to cover all kinds of stuff, but then I end up spending an hour and a half rambling about a small encounter that really has no bearing on the general story arc that I’m focusing on.  

So to counter this unfortunate happenstance, (I didn’t really know what this word meant so I google-define:-ed it.  Apparently it’s a French film produced in 2000 featuring Audrey Tautou and Faudel – adjust your vocabulary accordingly) (hahaha "Faudel"  she should do a duet with Fergie/form a 1950s comedy duo: "Faudel & Fergie"! [For maximum effect, pronounce "Faudel" as "Foddle"]) [I’ve decided to just start sentences over when an extended interruption like this occurs; I promise it’s not just to up the word count] So to counter this unfortunate happenstance, I’m going to set my sights really low for this post.  That way I can be pleasantly surprised when I manage to cover a fraction of the actual topic at hand!  In this post I, Michael, will inform the reader of at least one thing that I did or saw or was assaulted by while within the borders of Germany.  

Happenstance is a French word? I think I've been pronouncing it wrong.

So we’re talking about cultural differences between Germany and America, specifically the differing attitudes about alcohol.  We covered children’s beers, and now I’m going to tell another story.

Story #2

While I was in Germany, I witnessed an event of epic proportions called Carneval.  It was a city-wide party, and it was ridiculous. It was on the Sunday before Ash Wednesday, so I’m fairly certain it was vaguely connected to Fat Tuesday, although I’m not sure if the Germans knew that.  Keep in mind as I begin to describe it that we were in Erfurt, which is a city of just about 200,000 people.  There are much bigger cities around Germany, and probably much more prominent celebrations throughout the year.  

When we got up that morning, we were aware that there was to be a parade later that day.  The magnitude of this incredible parade is what caught us off guard.  As we walked to church at about 9 that morning, we already started to see random families on the street, completely dressed up like it was a ridiculous German version of Halloween that you never grow out of.  Right after church, a group of us made our way to the plaza where the parade was to begin…

The streets already smelled of beer.  Once we reached the plaza, we noticed three things immediately:  

1. There were parade floats everywhere, and there were tons of people in them, yelling, eating, drinking, and yelling again. 
2. Every single person (there were a lot) in this huge plaza was dressed ridiculously
3. Many(most) of them were drunk. 

There were open bottles of alcohol everywhere.  I saw a half-full bottle of vodka sitting on the ground out in the open, like someone had gingerly set it down to give someone a big tipsy hug but absentmindedly left it there. 

German Mutant Ninja Turtles

Once the parade itself started, we were mesmerized.  Float after float of happy Germans rolled by, and people were going crazy.  I saw a man on a float holding a beer in one hand and throwing candy with the other.  You know how at baseball games, a lady will walk around and sell hot dogs and peanuts from this big box she has attached to her front?  There was one of those selling little tiny plastic bottles of liquor.  At first I assumed it was candy, but then I looked closer and realized my mistake.  

"Party" and "Fun" are regular parts of the German vocabulary.  THAT'S IT!  This is an ESL instructional video!

There were two kinds of floats:  musical ones, and drunk ones.

But seriously, the entire city was filled with drunken costumed Germans.  A wise man once likened it to Mardi Gras in New Orleans, except more family friendly (less nudity), no beads, and more public alcohol consumption.

The floats themselves and the costumed people in the parade were absolutely ridiculous, as you will see from these pictures.  After we watched the parade and danced and sang and participated in back-and-forth shouting of “Hallo!” between the floats and the observers for a while, we went inside a big tent which was labeled “Irish pub”.  Apparently this is where the more elderly Germans go for Carneval.  It was a huge tent with rows and rows of benches, and a stage up in the front, which was covered with instruments and other musical stuffs.  There was only one guy up on stage, however, and all he did was yell “hallo!” to the audience every now and then.  (A popular greeting apparently)  Most of the time he was just playing recorded music.  (He also wandered around the stage a lot because he didn’t have a chair.  My hypothesis is that he had just wandered up there earlier and started yelling and no one had bothered to interrupt his fun.)

Notice the fanny pack.  Also: She was embarrassingly drunk and did not speak a bit of English.

So imagine this: Old cheesy German folk songs are being blasted on big speakers.  The huge tent is filled with old intoxicated German people in ridiculous costumes singing along to these songs from their childhood that all feature accordions and sound like what lederhosen would sound like if it was an audible phenomenon.  It was made all the more better when they played “Sweet Caroline” though, as we made sure those Germans would not soon forget those obnoxiously loud and regularly dressed Americans who kept waving their arms in the air and imitating the brass in a horribly clumsy, dissonant way.  

He was judging us with those eyes. He is now my desktop background.

So judging from this story, you might say that the German attitude towards alcohol is ever so slightly different from ours.