karneval

I met up with Mandie and Suz (and their respective grad school and couchsurfer buddies) in Cologne for Karneval this weekend. I didn't much know what to expect, though the fact that my company's Cologne office essentially closed at 11 a.m. last Thursday with no particular plans to be truly open for business again until the following Wednesday says something about the scale of mayhem. And indeed, much like Ann's and my Oktoberfest experience, it started out pretty calm, with a multi-hour Thai lunch, and ended with a parade, a cohort of Italian scuba divers, the pilot to my stewardess costume (though he seemed pretty enamored of German Princess Leia), mushroom pizza on the street, a circus director, Robin Hood missing the memo on it being Men in Tights, some Mexican-Americans on a train, and Marcus the giraffe photobombing every picture a group of ten blackfaced Germans attempted to take. (Because yes, Germany has not gotten the memo about how blackface is not okay.) Any holiday that involves shutting down a whole city to party for days on end is fine by me. So, Mardi Gras one of these years?