welcome to carnival

Last weekend was one of the best weekends I've had in Germany. Friday night I went to the abipach rty (party at a club for highschool students to raise money for their prom-equivalent) of my Canadian friend in Dusseldorf with some other girlfriends and we danced all night and had a really good time.

Then, a friend of Julia's who lives in Köln and is very involved in Carnival invited us to come with him to a very exclusive carnival party called Kajuja where you gotta be in the know to get tickets to, so Saturday morning Julia and I went to a costume shop in Dusseldorf, spent the afternoon playing dress up, and spent all night at one of the coolest parties in Germany.

There were, what, three bands, two famous comedians (the only jokes I understood were the ones featuring the NSA, I think there were about a dozen of them), a ventriloquist (who was actually incredibly talented and funny and I mostly understood him), a dance group, the Kajuja royalty feat. a drag queen, a marching band, and a dancing brass band.

The people in our group were hilarious and fun and friendly and we spent the entire night making jokes, drinking Kölsch beer, and dancing (me on a chair so that I could actually see things).

It was really interesting because Germans are crazy especially when they've got beer, and the Kölsch people are REALLY patriotic and proud of their town and that is a little unusual for Germany I think.

Oh yeah I forgot to add, everyone dresses up crazy. Most people are some variant of clown/jester thing with red and white stripes (for Köln), some are costumey like Julia and I were, and some are just, well, crazy.

marching band/opening sequence. after the musicians left the stage, they did a dance, part of which included rubbing one's butt against the butt of the man next to you? welcome to carnival!

 dancing on the chairs. shorties unite.

 julia :)

 ventriloquist plus funny monkey

 bläck fööss: kölsch rock and roll band. if you live in köln, they are like the rolling stones, if you don't live in köln you have probably never heard of them and you will not understand half of their songs even if you are fluent in german because kölsch is impossible.

 raise the roof, china man!

 i think i took this while dancing.

 julia and her lovely pirate friend

 the kajuja tanzenkuchen (dance chicks? but like, baby chicken chicks)

 another really cool german rock band, they all wore black and red plaid, and i wanted to get a picture of the bassist because he did his solo while standing on top of the confetti vent and his kilt flew up and it was great but i was too slow

 shamless selfies

probably the coolest brass band in the world, they were young and danced the entire time they played and had so much energy it was great

 a real cat and a pretend cat watching from the background.

cute <3