Makes me laugh, every time.

I'm pretty sure I forwarded this to some of you before (maybe even posted it before...), but I just thought about it again today and decided to post it. It's just so darn funny! I think it gets funnier the longer I live here, too. :)

Clowns and Candy = Rosenmontag

Our gang as we headed to the parade
(L to R): Melanie, Claudia, Petra, Me, Constantine, Achim

The Rosenmontag parade was awesome! Every single spectator was in costume, as well as every person involved in the parade. In addition to smiling at the funny floats and dancing along with the marching bands, we spent most of the parade yelling out "Karamelle!!" at the top of our lungs to entice the paraders to throw candy and flowers our way. It worked, too, because we ended up with Halloween-worthy quantities by the end!

What really surprised me about Rosenmontag was how family-friendly the whole thing was. In spite of the craziness and the drunken masses, it still felt orderly, in that only-the-Germans-could-do-it way. We saw lots of kids lined up along the parade route, gleefully catching candy as it was tossed their way.

After four hours of parade watching, singing, and shouting, we grabbed a quick bite to eat at a tiny fast food Chinese joint. With our bellies happily full of fried Chinese goodness, we started to head towards the Hauptbahnhof to catch our train home. Boy did we get lucky on that one. We totally underestimated the amount of time it would take to get back due to the crowds. We ended up making it there with 2 minutes to spare....and that was only because the train was 5 minutes late! Good to know for next time, I guess. :)

Anyway, the whole experience was fantastically fun, and definitely makes me want to go to Karnival again next year. Although our pics are online here, I've posted some highlight pics from Rosenmontag below.

One of the adorable kids at the parade

Pirate ship float

Fun lion/dragon thingyAnother cool floatClown marching band
Birkenstock gummies that Andy caught - only in Germany! :)

Parade candy - most with special Karnival wrappers

Wow. A soft waffle...that's a new one.

Komplete Kraziness

Oh my gosh, I am in love with Köln!

We had such a great time in Köln for Karnival last weekend. That town is super fun. Everyone was friendly and happy, and there were so many fun things to do. It's a bit hard to condense all of the craziness into one post, but I'll try to give a good recap...albeit a long one!

We left Stuttgart for Köln on Friday with Shravanthi, Marjetka, and Marjetka's friend, Maya, who had driven up to Stuttgart from Slovenia the day before. We hopped on the Autobahn, and arrived in Köln 4 hours later. After checking in at the Fremdenzimmer Helga (great place to stay, by the way), we headed downtown for dinner. Since *everyone* wears costumes during Karnival, we decided to wear part of our full costume downtown...basically wigs and hats. This was a good idea, because if we hadn't we definitely would've stuck out as misfits!
As you can see, we had a bit of a theme to our costumes. Shravanthi, Marjetka, and I were "leopard girls", and Andy was our official "manager". This came in handy to have a manager when we were out dancing because he could scare off any weirdos that approached us.

Anyway, wandering the streets downtown, we came across a nice brewery, called Sünner im Walfisch, and stopped in for dinner and Kölsch. Kölsch is the official beer of Köln. It's served in small, 0,2 liter glasses, is easy to drink, and is very tasty. The Sünner brewery serves it in giant cylinders with a personal tap, like so:
At the brewery, it was so cool because it was obvious that Karnival is really all ages. The table next to us was a table of retirees, who had been there drinking Kölsch together all afternoon; they went through two 5 liter "columns" of beer while we were there. I feel like you would never see that in the US. They were so fun - singing along to songs and chatting it up. Loved it. After dinner we spent the rest of the night hopping from bar to bar and shaking our groove things on the dance floor. Super fun. On the way home, our train ride was full of tipsy, costumed people, who were happily leading the train in song. Although there were many impressive costumes, I think Broccoli Man was our favorite:
The next morning, we headed downtown, sans costumes, for some shopping (Köln is one of the fashion centers in Deutschland). Once again, it was clear that one should never leave home without a costume during Karnival. That day there was a huge party in the Neumarkt Platz, with tons of families and groups of friends all in costume. Check out this panorama to see the size of the thing!We stayed and sang a few songs at the party, and got a bit of a Karnival history run-down (auf Deutsch) from a friendly dad next to us. From there we walked to the Dom: the huge, beautiful, famous Gothic cathedral of Köln. All I can say about that is "Wow." That cathedral is too amazing to describe in words. It is so tall you can barely focus your eyes on the tips of the spires.

Standing in front of the Dom in Köln

That night we went out in "full" costume. Dressed all crazy from head-to-toe. We saw lots of funny people in costume, and of course took many pics (included in our Costume Hall of Fame, below). We danced, sang songs, people-watched, and listened to a marching band playing in the street. Another great night.

The red pouches around our necks are specially
designed to hold glasses of Kölsch. Cooooool.

The next day, Shravanthi, Marjetka, and Maya left to return to Stuttgart, and Andy and I stayed to await the arrival of Rosenmontag (Rose Monday), supposedly the biggest day of Karnival. In fact, so big, thatI think I'll have to put it in a separate post! Until that second post, feel free to browse our catalog of pics from the weekend here.

"Karnival Costume Hall of Fame"

What's with the Pom-Pom hats?

Fun Fact : The Bollenhut, traditional in the Black Forest,
can weigh up to 2 kg (4.4 lbs)!

A couple of weekends ago we took a trip to the Black Forest with our neighbors, Beth and Sean, and their son, Tad. We drove for about 1.5 hours to a town called Triburg, south of Stuttgart. The town is famous for its waterfall and handmade cuckoo clocks. Beth and Sean wanted to go both to show us the town and to buy one of the beautiful cuckoo clocks as a gift to themselves for their 15th wedding anniversary.

Although we had originally planned to hike the waterfall *before* looking at cuckoo clocks, Tad insisted that the cuckoo clocks were much too important to delay. So, we went The House of 1000 Clocks right away. :) And man, they're not kidding about the 1000 clocks -- there were a lot!

Inside the cuckoo clock store

Although it was a tough decision, Beth and Sean successfully picked out the perfect clock. When the hour strikes, the cuckoo bird cuckoos, after which the clock plays Edelweiss while pairs of dancers rotate and twirl, a water wheel spins, and Bavarian men tap their beer glasses on the table in rhythm. Cooooool.

Beth and Sean's Clock

Tad doing his impression of a Hummel figurine
while modeling a grey cap from the store's gift shop

After the cuckoo clock selection was complete, we headed for the waterfall. Since there was some ice and snow on the trails, we were only allowed to hike up to the base. It was still really pretty though. Maybe in the spring we can go back and hike all the way to the top. We also drove over to a bell tower we saw in the distance and hiked up to it. That was nice because there were some pretty views of the town below.

At the base of the waterfall in Triburg

Bell Tower

View of the town below

Finally, after our busy day we headed to a local restaurant for their famous Black Forest cake...yum. The decor was that of a hunting lodge with stuffed deer, ferrets, you name it adorning the walls. By far the funniest decoration was the group of stuffed squirrels playing poker. Those crazy Germans.

The Headlights Rock!

Back in Champaign-Urbana we were introduced to a band called The Headlights. Andy heard about them originally because the lead singer, Erin, is the daughter of a man he worked with, and they had just had one of their songs featured on Grey's Anatomy ("Everybody Needs a Fence to Lean on", Episode 18).

Since The Headlights are on a European tour right now, we gathered up a posse and went to see them in Remseck am Neckar, a subburb of Stuttgart, last Friday night. We got there early and spent some time talking with Erin before the show started and met the other band members, Brent and Tristen. They played at this place called Haus der Jugend, which is a community center of some kind. Although the venue was tiny - literally the size of a living room - it was packed with 40 people by the time the show started. It was a really fun show. Hopefully their European tour will be a big success and they'll headline in Stuttgart again soon. :)

If you'd like to hear some of their songs (including the one from Grey's Anatomy) click here. You're totally gonna want their CD now...

Well, at least my cupcakes scored big...

Really, how cute are these cupcakes? I got the idea online, and happily was able to recreate them. We took them, along with some Chex mix (a la Bryan) and Buffalo Wings, over to our Super Bowl party on Sunday night. Of course, normally we wouldn't be able to make such awesome American treats, but a friend of a friend was able to hook us up with some American ingredients from the nearby Army base. Those lucky base-pass holders!

The party was really fun, but man was it hard watching the game. Not only was it sad to see the Bears lose (although I'm kind of happy for Peyton Manning, since he's a UT boy), but here in Deutschland the game aired from 12:30am to 4am (with only British commercials. sucky). That's dedication, I tell ya. We went over to Katie and Carl's at 10pm and joined a group of 5 other Americans, and proceeded to munch on all sorts of American goodies. Shravanthi made a Reese's Peanut Butter Cup ice cream pie with Oreo crust, and Katie made all kinds of awesome chip-n-dip combos. Even though the Bears lost, the game was fun to watch and we all felt a little bit like kids at a slumber party, staying up all night and pigging out on junk food. Too bad no one fell asleep, cause we would've totally done that shaving-cream-in-the-hand-and-tickle-the-nose thing. :)

Even bigger than I thought!

So, as I mentioned before, we're going with some friends to Karnival in Köln next weekend. We've heard a lot about Karnival, since it's a big deal to a lot of people here. The festivities start next Thursday, and culminate with a HUGE parade on Monday morning, referred to as Rosenmontag. While looking for more information this morning, I discovered that this parade is way bigger than I thought. Check out these crazy statistics:

Rosenmontag Parade facts:
- 1.5 million people in the streets
- 7 km long route (4.3 miles)
- 4 hours long
- 10,000 participants
- 124 bands
- 440 horses
- 74 decorated floats
- 57 tractors
- 50 trucks (to carry the stuff thrown into the crowd)

Thrown into the crowd:
- 150 tons of sweets
- 700,000 chocolate bars
- 220,000 boxes of chocolates
- 300,000 bouquets
- thousands of small toys and gifts

Materials used to build the floats:
- 4,000 meters of roof slats (13,100 feet)
- 5,000 meters of wire (16,400 feet)
- 6,500 sq. meters of wire mesh (70,000 sq. feet)
- 320 sq. meters of wood (3,450 sq. feet)
- 2,000 sq. meters of fiber board (21,500 sq. feet)
- 1,800 kg of nails and screws (4,000 lbs.)
- 3,600 kg of paint (8,000 lbs.)
- 10 kg of adhesive (22 lbs.)
- 120 sq. meters of fabric (1,300 sq. feet)
- 40 cubic meters of styrofoam (1,400 cubic feet)
- 720 kg of paper (1,590 lbs.)

Costs:
- For the parade materials: 650,000 Euros (850,000 dollars)
- Total: 2.3 million Euros (3 million dollars)

Totally insane, right? I can't wait! :)

99 Luftballons!

This past Saturday night, I was invited out for a night of dancing with "the girls". We had a group of seven: me, Petra, Shravanthi, Shravanthi's friend Marietka, Melanie (who works in our group at MPI), Petra's friend Violetta, and Svea (former MPI-er).

We started the evening by meeting up at Petra's apartment, which is close to downtown Stuttgart. Melanie brought this awesome Dutch liquor called Nobeltje. It's produced by a hotel located on an island in the Netherlands, and is only sold there and at 4 other licensed locations in the Netherlands. No where else in the world is it possible to purchase it. Melanie knows about it because she grew up 5 km from the Dutch border, and so she picked up a bottle on a recent trip home. The liquor is very sweet, tastes a bit like vanilla and almonds, and is completely deceptive at 32% alcohol. If I ever acquire my own bottle, I'll be happy to share. :)

Anyway, after our little cocktail hour, we headed downtown at the ripe hour of midnight. The bar we went to is this funny mix of American and German culture. They had four different parts, each with their own DJ and vibe. (1) a Coyote Ugly bar, complete with skanky girls dancing on the bar and American flags and license plates on the walls. When we walked in, they were playing "Devil went down to Georgia"... (2) a Hip Hop bar ... (3) a new age music bar ... and finally (4) an American/German bar. We chose the latter since it was the least crowded and had some good dance music.

The music at our chosen bar was definitely a bit nostalgic. Songs that I remember were: "99 Luftballons", "Grease Megamix", "Surfin' USA", "I've Had the Time of my Life", and "Highway to Hell". Believe me, you've never lived until you've heard a guy with a thick German accent sing "I've Had the Time of my Life" to you. Then there were tons of other German pop songs, which just cracked me up. Petra, Melanie, and Svea would instantly burst into song, while the rest of us danced along, completely confused.

My favorite was a German song called "Cowboy und Indianer", that was complete with matching motions, like throwing your lasso and riding a horse (Listen to it here). We also learned some typical Karnival songs (German Mardi Gras), and since we're going to Karnival in Köln next weekend it was good preparation! That trip will certainly generate some new postings; Karnival is supposed to be wild. Hopefully we'll have some "appropriate" pictures to post! :)

I'm becoming a *real* German

So, maybe we haven't mentioned this yet, but there are a couple of stores here that have weekly Angebote (offers) that drive the masses wild. Aldi and Lidl, both mainly just regular grocery stores, have special, super-cheap offers twice a week, which they announce with flyers the week before. These offers are not groceries. They're things like computers, roller blades, costumes, paint sets, flower pots...pretty much anything goes. These offers are notorious for drawing large crowds that huddle outside the store early in the morning and then rush inside once the doors open at 8am. Since stuff can sell out fast, it's the only way to guarantee you'll get what you want. Especially hectic days are women's workout clothes days and laptop days. Sometimes people throw-down to determine who's gonna get the last medium white t-shirt.

Anyway, last Thursday I joined the ranks as one of these crazy people. Lidl's flyer advertised cat toys, and so I thought it would be fun to race over and get Zulu a cool cat tree...you know those things with the scratching post and levels for them to climb. They were only 40 Euros, and in the US they're easily $150 or more. My friend Petra agreed to drive me and then guided me in the ways of the Lidl-craziness. Sure enough, when we arrived at 7:50am there was already a line forming at the doors. It was really funny to see what people bee-lined for. One woman bought two Singer sewing machines, while another guy bought all 24 shoe racks out for sale. Meanwhile, I carefully picked out a red cat tree for Zulu.

I can't wait to go back for the next Angebote day and just watch the crowds. Our friend Guillaume likes to do his regular grocery shopping on Angebote days, just to see all of the people in action. From his stories of mayhem, it sounds like these Angebote days are people-watching at its best. And you thought Germans only cared about beer.

Which Gender is your Toothbrush?

I read just the other day a headline that [sic] "Bilingualism offsets dementia." I sure hope that's true, because I'm starting to recall why I shied away from learning languages a decade ago (which, by the way, I never really learned beyond "hola!" "Que Tal!" or "Quieres?" which I use for pretty much every response irregardless of it's true value).

Here are a few quick thoughts about learning languages in a classroom (again). And incase you're wondering, I've just taken a moment from my studies to procra.. err write my loyal readers.. And yes, I know it's Friday night.

(1) Every time the teacher calls on me to answer a question, I have no idea whatsoever what I'm supposed to say. BUT, I can answer EVERYONE else's questions. Is there a psychologist in the house? I think I need to talk to someone about this.

(2) Languages are incredibly fun to learn. It's the only time you can "accidentally" say "Good afternoon, I speak with your fruits" and actually get away with it. And no, it doesn't make any more sense in German although it may make sense to Borat. (Guten Tag, ich spreche mit deine Obst) :)

(3) Finally, learning a new language makes you realise how little you know of your Mother Tongue. Seriously.. do any of you understand the Accusative vs Genative vs Dative cases? If you do, I'm hiring.. five bucks an hour, plus I'll send fun German candies. :) I took Latin for a stint in College, but I don't remember getting into that stuff nearly as quickly. Which is why I probably only remember how to say, Salve, Magister (Hello, Teacher). So much for the good stuff. But I now understand (remember?) exactly where I put the modal verb versus the infinitive verb versus the time / location / why in a sentence. At least in German, anyway. Woohoo!

Ta Ta for Now, my lovelies. I have to go figure out what gefaehrlich means.

/a