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"