German Karneval

Wow, clearly I'm terrible at updating my blog. It's definitely been a while. I'm putting more effort into updating my facebook pictures than I am updating this blog, but whatever works.

After Venice Carnival, the next weekend I was back up in Germany to celebrate Karneval there. So compared to Italy is was very very different. Italy was way more traditional and seemed to showcase a more cultural celebration. German Karneval was just a mess. Surprisingly there were so many older people there. It's amazing, its like nobody works for 5 whole days.

We took the 9 am train into Cologne on Saturday, our first day there. Drunk by 10. I was supposed to be a sexy pirate. But as we all know, sexy costume pictures never look that sexy in person. You get what you pay for lol. Bertan was a damn adorable Crocodile and Oscar was a bunny, yes a bunny. Not a good start. Running over baby carriages and not knowing how to get into any bars caused for some confusion. So we wandered. We wandered all over that city of Cologne going into random bars and having random drinks. We stumbled upon a great bar with lots of colorful people. When I came out from the bathroom, there was a 25 piece band playing in the bar. I practically had my head inside one of the ladies trombones. It was just a bunch of random costumes and  random celebrations. I'm not sure I have any idea what Karneval means historically to Germany, but it sure is a great time. We went all day. All day. Walking and drinking. The best thing about Germany so far is that it is waayy cheaper than Milan. I can actually afford to drink at the bar. Honestly writing this blog two weeks later I can't remember much. We were exhausted so we decided to take Sunday off. On Monday we headed back to Cologne and continued with the same plan. Walk and Drink. Drunk by 11 a.m. again. That is a first. 23 and not slowing down yet...well a bit. Although there was a great parade we could watch. It was great as long as you learned to avoid the candy missiles that were being thrown from the floats. The floats were all sorts of raunchy and controversial, some were even nude floats! They had great costumes though.

It was a great time. Bertan, Oscar, and Liz and their friends from WHU were great company:) By around 11 pm we were just exhausted so we headed back in the freezing cold. We had a full apartment with some other MAIB grad students staying with us. It was nice to have familiar faces around, especially Gators!

I decided to stay till Wed because my classes were cancelled on Monday and Tuesday. Thanks Bocconi. It was nice to stay the extra days with Bertan. We explored the neighboring town of Koblenz and watched movies! I think that may be the most normal thing I have done on this trip so far. It was so nice to just have a couple of days just to chill. The Karnival experience was one I won't forget, the costumes, the chaos, the jaggerbombs. It was just an excuse to party, and a good one at that. 

I have some great colorful pictures to illustrate this post. It's difficult to write about it afterwards because so much has happened since. So I'm going to try and be better about posting. (probably not)