Kate's Description of Duesseldorf Karneval:

Imagine a cross between Halloween, Mardi Gras and Oktoberfest. It's a seasonal holiday as ubiquitous as Christmas and the Rheinland Germans celebrate it in a big way. It's the same Catholic holiday as Mardi Gras, which is basically the time to party like mad before you enter Lent, the 40 days of fasting and austerity (when Jesus was wandering round the desert) before Easter. It's 6 days of craziness which is the best German attempt I know of to dispell those myths that Germans are all seriousness.

It all begins on Thursday, Altweiberfastnacht. This means something like 'old woman's fasting night'. They're not fasting, though. This is the day the women in the city take power: they storm the city hall, take the keys from the mayor and govern the city for a day. What would happen if the mayor were a woman?? not sure... the mayor here's a man... the current Chancellor of the country is a woman, so I guess she just kept the keys to the Parliament for the day. When they're finished with their storming business, the women roam the streets and snip off the tie of any man so careless as to wear one. (Symbolism, anyone?) After 11:11am the vast majority of the city get into a costume and leave work to go to the Altstadt (old city) and drink beer. Skipping work seems to be generally accepted and expected in Duesseldorf.






The party generally continues until Saturday, when there is a race in the afternoon of men dressed up as virgins (blonde braids, drag, high heels) who race around Königs Alle, the chi-chi historic shopping boulevard. You can see a shot here of the Cartier store boarding up its windows on Saturday before the onslaught.

Sunday, there is costumed chaos and celebrations on Königs Allee, also known as the "Kö". I met up at noon with a friend from work, a big group of her friends and family, and brought Tony and our neighbour Mariza along. There were 14 of us all dressed up as polar bears. Here are a couple photos for your perusal! The streets are all blocked off and people just... be... there. They bring their whole family, there are food and drink stalls, and musicians - we danced our butts off to two Maracatu/ Samba bands!!








Rosenmontag, 'Rose Monday' is almost a regional holiday (Tony had it off; one of my two employers gave it to me off) and the big parade. A couple of shots below of the parade, too. There are marching bands, horses, more costumes, lots of candy and other random things like toys and sausages thrown, and cool papier mache floats with political commentary on them. Tony and I were exhausted by Monday and went to the parade for half an hour then fled!







Veilchendienstag, 'Violet Tuesday' things are almost back to normal. In Canada this is called Shrove Tuesday or Pancake Tuesday. I remember churches on Salt Spring Island doing big pancake breakfasts on that morning, which is the only sign I've seen of this holiday in Canada. I wonder if the 'roses are red, violets are blue' phrase is connected to Karneval somehow?


Aschermittwoch, 'Ash Wednesday' is the first official day of LENT. And beans. :- ) (We've given up meat as an experiment during Lent this year. Hoping to explore new vegetarian recipes and challenge ourselves!) Does anyone have any other Lenten givings-up they’d like share with us?? Post a comment!

testing...

testing out the new bells and whistles blogger...

hungry for hungary

this was our first night in hungary visiting with three friends who are living there: ariel ann and adam (centre) in budapest, and angie in siofok.


big, beautiful church in the middle of pest. the city's divided by the danube river; pest is the east side and buda the west.


we arrived on saturday and went down to the parliament buildings (below) that night to join the protests against the hungarian prime minister. he had recently been caught on tape saying that he had lied to the public for two years about the state of the economy in order to get reelected in april. people demanded his resignation but he refused, even after admiting that it was him on the tapes.


about 30,000 people were at the protests on sat night and they had been going on all week. a major economic problem for hungary when we were there was price increases: heating and electricity had gone up by about 35% over a few months.


above and below: this was a cool pub we visited on sat night called szimpla. indoor, outdoor, plastic lanterns, movie screens, beer, plants, delapidated walls with peeling paint, a bike room, cozy nooks and tons of character. this is double a's great shot of a cozy nook




a jewelry stand for girls to play in.


graffiti on the walk to lunch the next day.


lunch! really yummy, fusiony food. i was impressed we found more than meat, dumplings, paprika and sour cream.


wicked facades on old buildings.


tone and double a in the sun near double a's hood.


music academy where liszt studied.


the courtyard of ariel ann and adam's flat in pest.

...and we haven't even got to lake balaton yet!!! more excitement to come.

Kiran!

We received a visit from the lovely KIRAN!!! Yay! I urge you all to come and do the same. I love visits. Our couch is lonely without a warm body to keep it company, and we are comepletely overrun with sausages, too, and in need of help eating them... (I'm sure we can even scrounge up some ghee to fry them in for those who so desire.)


Kiran enjoying two major pleasures of our German existence: The bratwurst sausage with mustard and The Paulaner weissbier... ah, good times.

We visited the Koelner Dom, which is the massivist most kick ass cathedral ever. (It's in Cologne, which is 40mins from Duesseldorf). You really can't do it justice with a camera - it's just too tall.

These two dudes were hanging out in the doorway...

...checking out this chick.

My best meal to date in all of Germany was in Cologne at the Haxenhaus Am Rheingarten. It's an inn/pub/restaurant that's been around for a few hundred years. Damn good lamb knuckles, schnitzel and sausage!

More on our Hungary exploits to come soon...! :)

Liam's Baptism

In August we went on a Deutsche Bahn adventure (ie: train fiasco!! don't be needlessly fooled by the stereotype that Germans are efficient and orderly! I have evidence to prove otherwise...).

Our mission was to make it to the little town of Weidingen, near Bitburg, to attend Liam's baptism. Thanks to luck, dogged persistence and Claudia, the gracious mother of the baptee himself, we made it just in the nick of time. It was a wonderful day watching the ceremony, then meeting Claudia's family, getting a tour of the town and area and drinking white wine in the sun and gorging on cake.

This is little Liam!

Here he is with mom, Claudia, and dad, Mark. Claudia and Tone are friends from UBC. She still works there, but came over for a visit to Germany to do the baptism up in proper style with the full fam-damily.

This is the church the baptism was held in. It's a pilgrimage site (can't remember why), so is much bigger and more colourful than you would expect for the size of the town (about 200). Claudia's family's house was right across the street, so we just walked back over for the reception afterwards.

This is Johann, a friend of the family. He was totally adorable in his little lederhosen.

Claudia with the Tonemeiser.

Belgium

Here're a few shots of our visit to Belgium in August...

Tony, Alice and Giuseppe in Dinant, Belgium.

Dinant is on the Meuse River (also known as the Maas, as in Maastricht). Impressive church and cliff fortress.

Kayaking on the Lesse River... more castles on cliffs!

Me frolicking beside the river. I think this field is where the knights must have had jousting competitions...

Al and G-sep!

Kellys' visit

Hello, one and all…

Lots of things happening over here in Duesseldorf, keeping me from my appointed blogging rounds. I’m going to post up some chunks on different things we’ve been doing. I have almost completely given up on getting Tony to write entries, as he’s useless. (:) He’s working, entertaining parents, trying to keep me happy and also finishing up a paper for publication that he started at UBC, so has many sorry excuses…

We are now nicely settled into our apartment and had our first guests last week!!! Jim and Breeda Kelly (the co-creators of James Anthony, otherwise known as ‘Tony’) came and joined us in our pad for about 10 days. It was a great visit, despite the rain that insisted on pouring down in sheets for the first 2 days. We toured around the city and the Rhein promenade, visited a palace, had a visit from Tony’s aunt Lori who lives 2 hours away in Holland, and watched the Germany – Ireland European Cup qualifier game in a packed O’Reilley’s pub (Ireland bitterly defeated themselves). We drank many pints of beer, galleons of tea and filled ourselves up with sausages, schnitzel, sauerbraten and spuds.



Then we rented a car and drove down south to a town called Cochem on the Mosel River. The whole place is a fairy tale - and yes, I got to be the princess - with a huge castle perched on the top of a steep hill overlooking the town. The area was spared during the war, so unlike Duesseldorf and other major centres, all the little old houses, narrow cobblestone lanes, secret passages between buildings and city wall towers are still there, painted up all pretty for the tourists. The Mosel twists and turns through green hills saturated with growing grapes. Every restaurant and cafe in town has real grape vines loaded with fruit growing up around their signs and doorways. We stayed in an old inn which must have been in the family for generations, filled with old photos, collections of pocket watches, rocking horses, vases and rugs. I like old stuff, so needless to say, the inn and whole town were a goldmine for me.







On our way down we also stopped at the Maria Laach church and monastery in the Eifel region. It’s 850 years old and stunning. Chris Suen, you need to come visit us and see it! It’s a whole kind of retreat centre today as well as a functioning monastery, with a lake nearby for boating, walking trails, fields of grazing cows and organic food and wine production on the grounds.







Besides the town itself, the trip was significant because I drove us there and back in our trusty VW steed, on the German autobahns, reaching speeds of up to 130km/hr, and NO ONE WAS HURT. Jim, a seasoned Irish bus driver, wondered that we made it home at all, what with me driving counter-clockwise on round-abouts and entering the right-hand lane after left-hand turns.

That’s all fer now, folks! :) Kate