Adventure #2: Düsseldorf Karneval

So - Carnival (a.k.a. Mardi Gras) isn't a super-popular, well-celebrated holiday in the United States, but here in Dusseldorf, that is completely different. 

Almost everyone in the whole city gets into it. We started hearing about it weeks in advance: that we needed to find costumes, like, stat, because everyone wears costumes and we would stick out if we didn't have one. We were also warned that the city gets crazy, as in, when the whole mess starts women go around and are "culturally allowed" to cut men's ties and shoelaces with scissors, and you can barely find any sober people anywhere. Some people even warned us not to venture out in the evening or too close to the city-center starting Thursday. Rose Monday (the day of Carnival) is...on Monday. That's 5 straight days of partying. Hard. 

We also heard of the epic parade, the beautifully carved wooden masks and massive quantities of candy being thrown from the parade participants! 

So we were excited. On Thursday at 11 am I met Berkley at work with the kids to enjoy a Carnival-themed lab potluck with all of his coworkers. Bridger dressed up in the Buzz Lightyear costume (thank you Alexander and Grandma) that he's worn so much it has runs in the fabric like an old pair of nylons, and we simply put Juniper in her little fleece whole-body suit with dragon/dinosaur scales on the head (that we actually use every single day, but who would know, right?).

Berkley dressed up like a "Fat American".  People actually thought it was pretty funny :) 

The potluck was good - good people, good fun, every single person in a costume. I took the kids out in the hall for a bit around the time I thought it would be winding down (around 1ish?) so that people could get back to work. I poked my head in about 10 minutes later, however, to find THE ENTIRE, large lab (about 35 people) in a giant congo line that wrapped itself around the room.

The party was far from over. 
"Yeah...people never really came back to the lab..." Berkley said that evening after he came home. 
I was surprised to see Berkley come home early from work the next day. Apparently there weren't many people there. 

Also, starting Thursday, I slowly started seeing more and more people wandering around in costumes - alone and in groups, on the buses and trains, walking in the streets, in grocery stores, just ho-humming around like wearing a giant human-giraffe costume was completely normal. And I noticed that there was a theme: store-bought, full-bodied costumes, and bright, bright colors.

Saturday, we were excited to go to an official Carnival parade with our awesome neighbors.
Here's what we did in the morning (and often, on Saturday mornings):

As the afternoon parade approached, I prepared by putting on my reflective running clothes and buying a pink children's wig from the grocery store...it smelled terrible. I was glad I did, though, because when when we met up with our neighbors I realized that with anything less I would have felt enormously under-dressed. Before hopping in Martina's van, we had her daughter snap a photo of us:

And the parade? It. Was. AWESOME. Martina tried to prepare us. "There's lots of candy." She said. "And to get them to throw it to you, you yell 'Helau!'".
We staked our claim on the street corner, and waited for things to start. 

There were hundreds of people, and I saw maaaaybe 3 of them without costumes on. Nobody was sitting, and the kids couldn't keep themselves on the sidewalks (not even CLOSE) which resulted in just a small corridor for the parade participants to squeeze through.
bbbConfetti was flying everywhere, and the candy - oh, the candy. You think you've seen a parade where lots of candy is being thrown? Yeh. You haven't seen anything. Every single participant in the parade that wasn't carrying an instrument had a bottomless bag of sweets and was throwing to the crowd without abandon. 

It was raining candy and confetti. 
NO exaggeration. 
Like, I looked down at my open, empty camera bag on my hip and there were like 5 pieces of candy that had just fallen into it within the first few minutes. 
Bridger was in heaven. Juniper was in shock. And it was so loud, with people yelling the token "HELAU! HELAU!!" 

This video does no justice to the amount of candy everywhere. There was tons.

After the parade passed, we were thrilled with our loot. Then Martina said "Okay! Now we will go to the next street over, where it will pass again!". And we did! The parade ended up snaking around the neighborhood in such a way that we were able to watch it go by 3 different times. It was great fun, and the kids loved it. 

And this parade? It was a tiny one. The real Rosen Montag parade draws a crowd of 800,000-1 million people. The parade procession itself has 10,000 people in it and is 3 miles long from front to back. And the candy? 
20-30 tons. TONS. 
You GUYYYYYS. 
To put things in perspective, after that parade Martina's twins came home with a full laundry basket of candy. And there's 1 million people. 1/2 a million laundry baskets full of candy...

Unfortunately, this year the Rose Monday parade was cancelled for just the 3rd time in history (boohoo!) due to high winds. We were so bummed, and had totally planned on going. Instead, we decided to make the most of it (work was closed for the day) and celebrated with just a little bit of Louisiana Mardi Gras flare: Delicious, traditional Jambalaya. We took it over to Martina's house where we enjoyed it, laughed, and had a relaxed, evening filled with joy in their wonderful home. What a good memory to cherish :)

Here are a few more photos from the fun day: