Karneval For Foreigners

Combine these images in your mind: Mardi Gras. Halloween. Spring Break-style hedonism. Germans.

If your mind hasn't been blown, you should have a good idea of what the days before Lent look like in Dusseldorf, Cologne, and all over Germany's Rhineland. 

That is what Karneval looks like. 

There are parades, marching bands, folk songs, costumes, and dancing. There are costumes, candy, and fun for the kids. And there is a lot of partying for the older kids.

Our first brush with Karneval was while we were living in Dusseldorf's Altstadt, which meant we were ground zero for the drinking, carousing, dancing, bingeing, pissing, puking that accompanies Karneval.

A younger me might have loved that. But I am an old man now, and I had vertigo, which is not a lot of fun when everyday for five or six days (I lost track) there is either a party for 18 hours or street cleaning machinery for the remaining 6 below my window.

It's important to point out this is not a typical German phenomenon. It's strictly a Rhineland tradition. While the Rhinelanders party, the rest of Germany look on with a mix of surprise and dismay. It is, if we're going to rely on stereotypes, the most un-German thing you can imagine taking place in Germany.

Many non-Rhinelander Germans colleagues pack up and leave the area for an extended long weekend – the same way people in Florida board up with their windows and leave the coast when a hurricane is approaching.

Fun-loving, whatever-goes Berlin endures it, thanks to the government workers who relocated there from the old West German capital of Boon, in North Rhine-Westphalia.

And for Rhineland Germans, you either love Karneval or you hate it. Remember, they've been living with this all their lives, and many develop a powerful hate for the debauchery or the costumes or the Karneval songs (which all seem to sound the same to me).

As a foreigner, I have an advantage and a disadvantage. 

The disadvantage is I am an outsider to the festivities. I don't know the songs or the dances or the traditions. I didn't even bother with a costume last year, although Kata did. 

But being the outsider also means I don't have the years of hate for Karneval that others have for it. I just don't feel that strongly about it. I loathed the boozy carnage last year – I was also understanding, because I was a wild man once – but I enjoyed the spectacle of the costumes and the politically satirical parade floats.

As a foreigner, it would be easy to take the weekend off and ignore the whole thing. We almost did.

Instead we embraced our outsider-ness, put on costumes (well, just a wig for me), grabbed a few beers, and joined the crowd in Cologne. I might not love it, but I definitely don't hate it, and I don't know where I fit in, but we enjoyed it anyway.

The beer buying experience during Karneval in Cologne.

Daughter of Frankenstein.

A store in Cologne's downtown prepares for Hurricane Karneval.

Heidelberg: A Ruin Done Right

The French could not have realized what a favour they were doing for future generations of Germans when they blew up the castle at Heidelberg.

What some might consider a catastrophe, we can now consider a blessing because Heidelberg's romance comes largely from the castle ruins that rise above the town.

Imagine what could have happened if they left it there. Would a rich guy have bought it and renovated it into some aristocratic pleasure house? 

Would someone might have stepped in and "updated" it? Like the medieval and Romanesque cathedral that had their beautiful frescoes and vaults covered with gaudy Baroque gild work.

What we have instead is a ruin done right. No ostentation. No schnick-schnack. Aside from a museum, it's something as close to the real thing as you could get without travelling back in time. Which, when I think of it, would not be a good idea for someone like me: a non-German, Bad French-speaking Anglo.

But, what a ruin it is. The castle sits majestically on a hill just above the old town of Heidelberg. An old town that is actually old because Heidelberg had so little strategic importance that was one of the few German cities spared from being bombed into bits and pieces. A calm river flows in the foreground of the pretty little scene, with an old bridge spanning it. 

Still not swooning? Well, the limestone from the area has a pinkish red hue, so when a sunset hits it, like during a sunset, it appears bright red on the green forested hillside.

If you are unmoved by this, that's fine. The castle does not care about you and your stone heart. It had Victorian painters flocking to its battlements to make pretty landscapes. Poems have been lovingly composed on its mountains slopes. Even Mark Twain was moved enough to eschew his usual satirical tone and write about it sweepingly – he saved the his wit for another essay: The Damned German Language.

But if castle ruins are not your thing. Heidelberg has few more things for you:

Ominous-looking Baroque Churches

Or a Romanesque Church, if that's your thing

Cigar Store Africans:

An old timey Students' Prison

Fog

Happy People

If you go, I recommend dinner at Zum Roten Ochsen for decent wine, good food, and a lot of meat.

Omnibus Blog 2: Canada Stories

The Omnibus Blog is back! Filled with words you want and words you might not want. In this post, I share a few stories that I couldn't fit into my last post.

Calling it a night when it's still night

During one of my Canadian visits a couple of years ago, a few of us found ourselves in a Toronto bar at last call. Only it wasn't last call. It was the end of Daylight Savings Time, which meant the clocks would be set back an hour for more drinking time.

We found one such bar and ordered a round of pints. Then I remembered I had a bottle of Palinka in my knapsack. Why did I have a bottle of Palinka in my knapsack? I must have a vendetta against my liver.

So, I pulled the bottle out. I went to the bar and asked for half dozen empty shot glasses, which, inexplicably, the bartender handed to me without question. I returned to the table are begun pouring shots at 2:30am (our body's time).

No one felt well the next day. Except a Polish friend. He was fine and made it to a client meeting. They're made of different stuff in the East.

This year, a few of us, including a few survivors from the Palinka-After-Last-Call Incident gathered at a Toronto brewery. Shortly after midnight we paid our bills and lingered out front. Someone shrugged and halfheartedly suggested a nightcap. 

Everyone grumbled: "It's a work night." "It's the holidays." "I'm tired." So we said our heartfelt goodbyes and called it a night. 


Best Party Favour Ever

During my first Christmas away from home, my friends James and Robyn started a Christmas tradition, LudaCristmas.

This is the third year of a tried and true premise: Gather a small, tight group of friends together to drink, eat, drink, and hang out. 

As we left in the early morning at this Christmas's edition, we were given a Christmas gift box. Inside we found a jar of Advil, a bottle of Gatorade, an instant coffee packet, and an organic energy bar.

There are hosts who look after you during their party, and there are those rare hosts who look after you the morning after.


The Quest for Mexican Food

Toronto has so many great Mexican restaurants that discussions about which one is the best, or the most authentic, can seem like the 30-year-old Torontonian's equivalent of the Israel-Palestine debate from our university days.

There are a lot of opinion. Everyone is certain their's is right. Then someone mentions an more obscure taqueria that's truly authentic. Someone else says those tacos are SoCal knock offs. Then it gets ugly.

Having never been to Mexico, I am blessed with a blissful ignorance over my tacos. I'm happy as long as they're good. 

In passing, I told Kata of Toronto's great Mexican food. She was interested. This marked the beginning of a long quest for Mexican Food in Toronto. 

On one of our Discovery Walks I managed to steer us to Kensington Market, thinking that we'd eat some tacos at one of the neighbourhood's little cantinas. It was Sunday night and everything was closed because, well, it's the Lord's day, I guess.

The Quest for Mexican Food was put on hold for a couple of days until my cousin, Yolanda, and Mike took us to their neighbourhood taco joint, Wilbur's. I didn't see Mexicans labouring over my fish tacos, so I'm certain purists will doubt its authenticity. But damn they were good.

My mom also caught wind of Kata's Quest for Mexican and, upon our return from Toronto, cooked up one of our childhood favourites: Make-Your-Own Tacos. Again, they're not authentically Mexican, but they are delicious, and authentically Bellamy.