Fasching 2015: The Drunken Debauchery Continues

Last year, I posted a little bit about Fasching. To recap, Fasching is the German equivalent of Carnival or Mardi Gras. It starts the Friday before Ash Wednesday and lasts until the Tuesday before. (Fat Tuesday if you were raised Catholic). Western parts of Germany with heavy Catholic influence throw the biggest Fasching or Fasnacht parties. The word for the celebration depends on where in Germany you live. Some areas will still call it Carnival, particularly if they have heavy French influence.

The idea behind Fasching/Fasnacht/Carnival is that your sins are forgiven prior to the start of the Lent season. So, you have one last weekend to "live it up" before focusing on the Lent season. Since Catholic religion is hardly practiced any more in Germany, the party is less about the religious ideas behind Lent and more of another excuse to throw a nice party.

One of the main components of Fasching is dressing up like a "fool." Whereas Carnival in Venice brings about the image of extravagantly dressed masked party guests, you can pretty much dress however you like for Fasching. The most common costumes are head-to-toe animal outfits complete with hoods. This is probably partially because of the cold, wet weather in February in Germany. I wanted to dress up as a cow, but the store did not have my size costume. Instead, Greg convinced me to dress up as Princess Leia since he was going as Darth Vader.

We live within easy walking distance of our city's downtown area. However, before we could make it to the party, we had to walk through our very American neighborhood dressed like Star Wars characters. Can I just take this moment to comment: Americans do not know how to have fun. Seriously. We know how to ruin otherwise fun things.

None of the other Americans walking to the parade were dressed. We got a lot of crazy looks at first. Once we crossed from our American neighborhood into "real" Germany, all of the Germans were dressed up and partying. We actually got a lot of great comments from them. Small kids would yell "Leia" and wave. The girls at the beer stand scolded Greg for not dressing up as Hans Solo. We made a lot of random German friends for the day. They taught us the "correct" way to take shots from their little bottles of plum flavored vodka and how to sing along to polka music. By 9 pm, we were so exhausted we walked home and fell right to sleep. Our original plan was to attend the parade in the town across the river from us the following day, but we decided to stay home.

There are a few things that I will miss about Germany when we leave, and one of them is the sense of community here that just doesn't exist in the states. The idea of throwing a "town party" in the streets would never happen in America. Bonding with someone over a similar costume is something that would probably only occur at a college bar on Halloween. Germans have a reputation for being unfriendly, which can occasionally be true, but they are wonderfully inviting to all outsiders at social events. If you try your best to belong, they'll try their best to accept you. Most importantly, they know how to have fun while keeping it safe and acceptable for people of all ages.

'Tis the Season: Christmas Markets in Germany 2014

Nuremberg Market

One major adjustment you have to make when you move to Germany is accepting the fact that winter is miserable and feels like it will never end. I usually love winter, but Germany will ruin it for you. The sun comes up around 9 AM and sets about 4 PM. You're entire day of sun light is spent at work, in an office. That is, of course, if the sun even does make it's appearance from behind the thick, deep clouds that are a permanent fixture in the sky from October to April. Every single day, it rains at least a little. Sometimes it mists the entire day or alternates soft, steady rain. Snow is even more rare than sunlight, even though the wet air makes it feel cold enough to snow. If you have seasonal depression or a vitamin D deficiency, Germany is not a place that you would enjoy living.

Luckily, Christmas markets help make the start of winter a little more bearable. I wrote about the markets last year as well. They get talked up a lot by Americans in Germany. I won't lie, they really aren't anything too special. Most of them sell the same things and most of what they sell is crafts or Christmas decorations. The only redeeming factor that makes you want to visit them all is the food and drinks. Gluhwein (mulled wine) is a staple of all of the markets and each one will have different regional varieties. Some are fruit flavored like apfel (apple) or kirsch (cherry). Most are just red or white. You can also get non-alcoholic varieties. Other than the Christmas decor and gluhwein, the markets are pretty similar to any other festival in Germany.

Christmas market in our town.

Local: Iron & Wine

This past weekend, we went to Normandy, France to commemorate Veteran's Day. Before I get too caught up in our trip to Normandy, I wanted to take a moment to mention a great show we attend the day before heading to France.

Church turned into a stage.

I've been a big fan of Iron & Wine since freshman year of high school. When I saw he would be performing a show at a church in our area, I considered buying tickets but was turned off by the price. 60 euros to attend a Thursday night concert in a Gothic church did not sound appealing. By the time I decided to get tickets, they were sold out. At the last minute, I found someone selling a pair of tickets for 40 euros. That was much more in my price range.

We ended up walking most of the way to to show as it wasn't far from where we live. Some men stood outside selling beer and soda to take inside. The whole church was full of German hipsters, which I wasn't even aware existed until that day. There were very few Americans which surprised me.

It was an extremely intimate performance. He mispronounced the name of our city, which was cute. The majority of the show consisted of him asking people to call out songs they wanted to hear and him playing them on the spot. He had a few specifically chosen to play as a duet, but most of it was on the spot. The whole show was pretty impressive, included the choice of venue.

The next day, we packed up to leave for a pretty awesome trip to France!

Day Trip: Idstein Spring Festival

For the past two weeks, it's been unusually sunny, warm and beautiful here. This weekend, on the other hand, was the exact opposite. On Saturday, we got caught in the middle of a hail storm, something I have never witnessed outside of Colorado. When I say "hail storm", I don't mean the typical strong thunderstorm with accompanying hail that was more common in the southeast, I mean that it went from being sunny and calm to 30 mph wind gusts with pea sized hail stones (no rain) within 5 minutes. We just so happened to be leaving the store with a car load of groceries when it started. I always assumed the reasoning for the hail storms in Colorado was due to the high altitude and inability for the hail to melt into rain before hitting the ground, but that wouldn't explain why it suddenly hailed here. Welcome to springtime in Germany, I guess. It was obviously the best weekend possible to take a trip to a Spring festival a few towns away.

Local: Fasching (or Fasnacht Day) 2014

I remember when I was very young living in Pennsylvania and "celebrating" Fasnacht Day. For my non-German-American readers, Fasnacht Day is better known as Mardi Gras, Fat Tuesday, Carnival or, more simply put, the day before Lent begins. A fasnacht is like the German equivalent of a King's Cake, for lack of better comparison. It's a huge, fatty doughnut possibly made out of potatos. As a kid, I don't remember doing anything for Fasnacht Day other than acknowledging it. I'm not sure if I've ever actually had a fasnacht, but I would probably take a whoppie pie from an Amish bakery before a fasnacht anyway.

A few months ago, we were over at our friend's house flipping through a catalog about happenings in our area when I saw an advertisement for a Fasching cruise. I immediately asked if Fasching was the same as Fasnacht Day, and no one seemed to know what I was even talking about. Turns out, Fasching is basically the German Carnival and Faschnut Day is, of course, still the Tuesday before Lent right in the middle of the Fasching celebration.

Fasching is basically a giant, week long party here in Germany. Most of it involves dressing up in costumes (like Halloween), parades, heavy drinking and breaking glass all over the streets. Occasionally, you'll also see young men trying to persuade women to kiss them, but mostly it's just drunken craziness in costumes. Yet somehow, it's also relatively family friendly.

Christmas Markets

Let me start this post with some necessary disclosure: We don't celebrate Christmas.

Actually, we don't really celebrate holidays at all. Greg grew up primarily celebrating Jewish holidays and I hate holidays for personal reasons. I don't talk about religion, so we'll keep this short and sweet.


A lot of people we met here told us that their favorite part of living in Germany was the Christmas Markets. Basically, a Christmas Market is the exact same thing as the festivals they have from Spring until Fall except they serve gluhwein instead of beer. Gluhwein is essentially just mulled wine. It comes in red, white and apple, as well as some other regional types. (Greg swears they all taste like Tamiflu, which I don't understand because I thought Tamiflu was only available to adults in capsules...?) We both agree that apple is the best of the bunch, but is still basically just hard spiced apple cider. You could probably get the same experience from warming up some Strongbow.

Our first Christmas Market experience was last weekend in our town. We met some friends down there and it was a pretty good time. Christmas markets, unlike the festivals of summertime, are more similar to craft fairs. There are a lot of vendors selling overpriced trinkets. I'm okay with admitting that I am extremely cheap and would never partake in buying things other than food at a Christmas market. The food, however, is pretty similar to anything that you'll get at any festival all over Germany. We had, you guessed it, bratwurst with curry ketchup on a roll. They were serving lamb wurst the night we went, which was a nice change of pace. They were also selling potato pancakes with applesauce which we had to get since we didn't make latkes at all this year. Aside from that, we drank some gluhwein, hung out with some friends and walked home. Pretty average festival night.

This weekend, we went to nearby Frankfurt for their Christmas market which was massive. However, it was the exact same ordeal, just different scenery. Same booths and trinkets, same food, same giant crowd. It was a fun time but honestly, I'm totally unimpressed with the whole Christmas market thing. I'm actually shocked that people find Christmas markets to be the most enjoyable part of Germany. The weirdest part to me is that people around here actually go around visiting different town's Christmas markets all through December. I can understand going to the local ones within your area, but I wouldn't be willing to take a trip from where we live to say, Munich, just to go to a Christmas market. No thank you. I could get the same trinkets and bratwurst here within the three major cities in my area.

Basically, Christmas markets can be fun for the experience of drinking outdoors, but we weren't impressed by them at all. Festivals in the summer are much more enjoyable for us because they are less focused on purchasing things and more on enjoying yourselves. The festivals we went to during the warmer months typically had entertainment, rides for children and a greater variety of foods and drinks. However, it may be that others find so much enjoyment in Christmas markets because they have an over-all love of Christmastime in general, but that's obviously not us.


Next week, we plan to skip out on the Christmas market scene in order to spend money somewhere that I'd much rather: Ikea. Back in Colorado, Greg had a nice locker at work to store all of his Army nonsense. Since we've moved here, his Army stuff has slowly spilled from our tiny closet, to our bedroom, to our spare bedroom and is now taking up all of our storage space. My goal before going back to work full time is to organize our mess and hopefully get rid of some of the junk we've accumulated. I know I haven't officially announced it, but I will be finally going back to work full time very soon. Once I have the paperwork in hand and details about my start date, I'll give more information on my new position. I will go ahead and say that I am VERY excited to go back to work doing something that I love.

Greg did light the candles for Hanukkah one night this year, but sadly no latkes.

Frankfurt Auto Show

After a bit of a break, I've finally gotten around to blogging again. It's been a pretty crazy two weeks around here and we've been spending a lot of time at home, but things are starting to settle down and we're getting back into our usual routine. On Sunday, we took a trip to Frankfurt to the big international auto show at the Messe Frankfurt.

Local: Rheingau Wine Festival

Today marks the last day of one of the biggest festivals in our city. Rheingau is an area of Germany around the Rhine river known for it's Riesling. I'm not a fan of Riesling because I think it's entirely too sweet, but considering we live in an area known for a particularly wine, it felt necessary to go to the fest.

When I try to describe German festivals to friends or relatives back in America, it's almost impossible. In America, a festival is generally more of a craft fair dedicated to selling random overpriced homemade trinkets in a park or maybe based around a parade. Food served at an American festival is mostly deep fried sweets of some kind that cost about 20 cents to make and are sold for closer to $5. In America, everything is catered towards families and festivals are usually overly "kid-friendly" in that they often center around some sort of entertainment for children, are completely alcohol-free and end by 7 pm. I've never heard of anyone between the ages of 12-40 being excited about going to a festival in America. And why would they? American festivals are boring.

In Germany, when a town is having a festival, it's typically positioned right in the downtown of the city and often requires closing down several main streets for days or weeks on end. Vendors will be out most of the day and pretty much all night. German festivals are almost always centered around food and drinking. Whole squares and streets will be filled with tables and surrounded by places to buy fresh made wurst, pasta, pizza and kettle cooked chips. In certain areas, you can sit and be served like a giant outdoor restaurant. There will usually be a stage with a band covering some American music with thick German accents. Children are welcome and free to play in the open grassy areas, but you won't always find much entertainment for them. Some festivals will have areas with fair rides, but not always. People go all out for these events, too. You'll usually see them dressed as if they are attending a wedding or church service while they're maneuvering through the huge crowds of people who turn up for the fest. When you show up in jeans and a t-shirt, everyone knows you're American.

I don't think Americans can wrap their heads around the concept of German festivals for a vast number of reasons. The main one being that this kind of event would probably be in some way illegal in America. People drinking and smoking in public around small children seems outrageous in the States. Closing businesses for what's deemed as a "party" is practically scandalous. One person would complain because it was too loud or not safe enough, and the whole event would be cancelled. Americans aren't taught to control themselves. They don't teach their children how to behave in what is deemed as adult situations. We cause this separation in having a family and enjoying yourself. I remember living near Savannah, Georgia in college and every year when St. Patrick's Day came around, Savannah's streets became flooded with drunk college students partying along the river to the point of throwing up or blacking out. There were areas of the city sectioned off as almost a "family friendly" zone. You could take your kids to one area of the city to have their faces painted and ride a little green train in a circle or you could go down to River Street and drunkenly throw up into a dyed green river (so long as you weren't double-fisting, because that's still illegal). There's no middle ground. Festivals, especially ones dedicated to a particular kind of alcohol, will never work in American culture, so we have to enjoy them in Europe while we can. As I've heard others here say, "Americans would take something wonderful and ruin it."

Aside from the wine fest, we ventured out even a little more by getting sushi. It seems ridiculous that we would consider that venturing out, but ordering food is always a terrifying experience for us. I've picked up on enough words to know when something is beef or pork and I know how to recognize if a dish is made with salmon or tuna rather than shellfish. That seemed reason enough to try ordering sushi! It wasn't a total disaster, but it didn't go very well either. We thought we were going to a place that a friend recommended which was more English friendly, but we were wrong. After lots of pointing and confusion, we got something that we didn't mean to order from a very sweet waitress who was trying her best to please us. So, we ate it and felt like idiots for not being able to communicate better. I've picked up a little bit of German, but I doubt I'll ever feel fully comfortable walking into a restaurant and ordering food.

In other news, being back to work has been great. In February, I'll be starting a program to become a certified lactation consultant. I wish I could be working full time rather than part-time, but anything helps at this point. I'm happy to be able to keep my skills up and continue to learn new things while also living abroad. We are definitely much luckier than most!