Carnivals around the world

Today is Ash Wednesday, a day when Roman Catholic areas can witness in equal number people with ashes on their forehead and those with bags under their eyes. It is the first day of lent – the 40-day fasting period leading up to Easter. But it is also the day after Mardi Gras and the carnival week, a period of revelry which can lead to some serious hangovers at the finish.

This year I went to the carnival celebrations in Cologne, Germany – the largest street festival in Europe (pictured above). I think I’m going for a record at this point – I’ve now been to carnivals in six cities on three continents (I’m not sure if that’s a brag or an embarrassing confession). The carnivals that I’ve seen in Rio de Janeiro, Salvador, New Orleans, Venice, Binche, Maastricht and Cologne have all been remarkably different – reflecting the diversity of the global Catholic community.

An American asked me yesterday if Europeans celebrate the “American holiday of Mardi Gras.” In fact it’s Americans who are celebrating the European tradition of carnival, with Mardi Gras just being a local New Orleans variant. Carnivals have been celebrated in Europe in the days before Lent begins for 1,000 years. The term comes from the Latin carne vale, which means “goodbye to meat”. Traditionally during Lent Catholics were supposed to refrain from drinking or eating rich foods such as meat, dairy, fats and sugar. They were also not to engage in any partying or celebrations, to mark the 40 days that Jesus spent in the wilderness. So in the days before Lent, all rich food and drink had to be disposed of.

Cologne-Hamburg

I’ve just arrived in Copenhagen, I’m at a café on the harbor with my laptop. It’s a bit cold to be sitting on the harbor for this long, but it seems like something one should do when traveling across Europe in the 21st century. The train ride here from Hamburg was really cool. Long, but cool. The train actually goes right onto a ferry and then the ferry crosses over to Denmark, then continues making its way on to Copenhagen. You can get out of the train and walk around too, it’s nice. Here’s a photo of the ferry.

Cologne did not dissapoint in its debauchery. Me and Hale went to this huge party at a club under the bridge that leads to the zoo. It was quite far but apparently there was this gay bus full of the gays picking people up and bringing them there. I thought the bus was just about the funniest thing I had seen in my life. Of course by that point we had finished off a whole bottle of rum so I was pretty amused by just about anything. The club was pretty crazy, here’s a picture of that too (love that cameraphone). Thursday was a holiday in Germany, the day of the ascension, so noone had work the next day. After that club we went to another club somewhere (who knows) and ended up staying there till 7:30 in the morning, at which point I realized my plan to catch a 9:10 train to Hamburg didn’t make a whoile lot of sense, so I decided to just head right to the train station and get the next train to Hburg.

A weekend in Cologne

This weekend I went to Cologne to visit my friend Hale, who is there doing a program with the state department and was having a birthday party Friday night. It was really fun. I went Mark and Vanessa, a Dutch couple who recently moved to London who know Hale from San Diego. We stayed at a hostel right in the city center (next to the Dom) so what was pretty cool.

Hale had the party Friday night at the bar he’s working at, and there was a pretty good turnout. I met a lot of interesting people, including one girl who’s being living and working in Germany for five years. We were swapping stories of the difficulties Americans face getting work visas in Europe, and she told me that next time I enter the US I should be prepared for a thorough grilling. She said every time she comes home they ask her a million questions.

“Why were you in Germany?”
“Studying””Why can’t you study in the US?”
“I preferred to study there”
“Why have you chosen to work there?”
“Because I wanted to”

It’s kind of ridiculous. And this is just to get back in to your own country, which, by the way, is still taxing you even while you work abroad (the only country in the world to do so as far as I'm aware).