Guess it's about time I update this! I've been getting super busy, so haven't had much time for blogging :). Lots of fun times since my last post. A few weekends ago Katherine came out to visit and we had a great weekend, despite being in such a small town! The first night we went out with Daniel and his friends to a little Irish pub in Juelich. Really cute pub, but Katherine and I realized, to our chagrin, that smoking is allowed in pubs here, and we did NOT enjoy that. Our clothes and hair smelled terrible. Was still fun regardless though. Next day we went to Aachen, where we saw the very cool old Dom and town hall, which apparently Charlemagne once lived in. I also discovered 10 EUR shoes...4 pairs of boots to be exact haha. Katherine was able to control herself more and just bought 1 :). Then we met up with some of my work friends and went out for dinner and then to a bar. Funny enough, we Canadians get excited about German beer, while the Germans just get excited about the tasty, high percentage Belgian beer. The grass is always greener, I guess... although it seems the greenest is in Belgium... Sunday we slept in super late and managed to leave the house for a walk through Juelich, stopping at the Zitadel and a little duck "lake" (lagoon, maybe...), and we found 50 CENT GELATO!!!!!!!!!!!!! I have been something like 4 times since. I was SUPER excited to discover that. So yes, some of you may be thinking, but whaaat, a store was open in Juelich on a Sunday? Yes, apparently some restaurants, and gelato. Woohoo! While we were eating the gelato we became surrounded by a giant mob of drunk Karneval people, who were all in some Karneval club sponsored by the Irish man who ran the pub we were at Fri. He was a very friendly man, and came over and talked to us. And he was very surprised we knew he was Irish haha. But anyways, this Karneval group...very strange things to me. There are organizations of people that are sponsored or pay money to be a part of these groups. They all dress in costumes, and will take part in the Karneval parades. And apparently party lots the whole time. Pretty much an excuse to get drunk, although some of them have legit marching bands/dancers and spend months preparing for the parade. This particular group was dressed in blue and white striped shirts, and had other interesting accessories. They were very lively, and were singing Karneval songs loudly. Was fun to see. Oh, and most of these people were over 40. Nice to see a holiday where grown-ups can go wild :P.
Karneval
Karneval is a holiday which takes place in several places around the world, where people dress in costume over several days and party very hard before lent. The centre of Karneval in Germany is Cologne, and it gets so crazy there that some of the locals will actually leave during it,... except for the ones who are totally into it. Most people at our research institute were not into it, mainly being turned off by all the "annoying Karneval songs" and drunkness. I still wanted to experience it though, so fortunately had a few friends who also wanted to take part. At the research centre cafeteria on Thurs there was a Karneval party, where everyone dressed in costume, drank beer and danced to music. I stopped by there with Ezequiel for an hour or so during work. It was a fun atmosphere, with lots of hokey/folk-y Karneval songs that sort of reminded me of Boney M christmas songs...that kind of happy feel to it. Some did get annoying after a while though. But it was cool that there were songs that entire crowds of people would sing together. A lot of the songs are in the Cologne dialect, so even Germans don't understand the words. Karneval actually starts on Thurs and continues until the following Wed (or is it Wed to Tues? I can't remember.) Some people will actually party for the entire week, and then take a week off to recover. I chose to just do two main days of Karneval myself, and it was more than enough for me.
Saturday I got up really early and caught a train to Cologne, where I met my friend Kathrin, a German girl from Dusseldorf who Mike and I met in Oz. I went with some of her friends to a brewery there. There was an hour line-up at 10:30am to get in! Inside was packed and smokey (wahmp wahmp) so I was only able to handle it for a few hours. It was fun though...lots of great costumes, and Kathrin's friends were fun. Was great to catch up with her too. The brewery was in a cool, big old two story medieval-like (or actually medieval?) building, and the basement had no ventilation, so it got reallly smokey. Eventually I left and met Ezequiel, a work friend, and his friends, and spent the rest of the day partying outside by the river or in small bars nearby. It was a fun day/night...didn't get home until 2 or 3 am.
Sunday I got up late, and thinking what a nice day it was, decided to go for a bike ride. Sure enough, as soon as I got about 4 minutes away, I noticed a dark cloud looming in the distance. In anticipation, I turned around and started biking quickly home, but I wasn't fast enough. I got caught in a huge hail storm. I thought hail was more exciting and fun than the rain that could have been soaking me though. On my way back I saw people in costumes with bags of candy and flowers, and was really disappointed to realize I had missed the Karneval parade in Juelich!!! nooooooo!!!! I then turned around and went out again for a run/walk, now that I am on a hard core physio schedule to prepare for soccer, which I am hoping to play with friends here in April...That night went to Aachen for cheese fondu at work friends. The trains back to Juelich are especially terrible on Sunday, so I had to stay over there, and Monday (a day off) we went back to Cologne for the big Karneval parade. I didn't have my costume with me (an eighties work-out girl), so I got to wear Ezequiel's long brown monk costume, which he had lost all the accessories to. It was pretty funny.
The parade was SUPER LONG. We never saw the start or end, but watched for something like 4 hours. There were tons and tons of Karneval organizations who had large floats and costumes and marching bands. Lots of the men wore old fashioned wigs, like Beethoven or old lords or something. The best part - they threw chocolate, candy and flowers into the crowd the whole time! Of course we didn't prepare for that, so between 3 of us we just had my purse, and so that became SUPER stuffed and heavy. It was funny, like trick-or-treating for adults. Of course, the kids got to go up to the front of the crowds so they got TONS of candy. We in the back had to scramble for ones that were thrown near us :). Ezequiel's friend was super into catching the candy (and was much better at it than Ezequiel and I), and he didn't let us leave for a long time, so I gorged on chocolate all day. I felt gross after. I couldn't help thinking how expensive it would be to supply all the candy and flowers - they were throwing tons of roses! and tulips! and daffodils!! Oh, I tried some excellent German street food that weekend. I tried a Thueringer sausage, which was quite good. I can't remember what the other stuff was. After the parade, there were tons of people partying everywhere. Monday is one of the craziest Karneval days. All we wanted to do was sit down, so the only place we found that had room to do so was a pizzeria. We finally left at 6pm, exhausted.
Innsbruck, Austria
Although I was absolutely exhausted from the weekend before, I had yet another exciting weekend planned. I took Friday off work and left Thurs night for Munich. Funny enough, the cheapest way for me to get to Innsbruck by Fri morning was to plane to Munich, and then train to Innsbruck in the morning, and fortunately it gave me time to have a quick visit with friends Anna and Svenja in Munich! Was really great to see both of them, and we spent the night catching up in a cute little pub near Anna's place (no smoking allowed - whew!). Of course, I didn't arrive until late so it was a late night (3am), and I had to get up at 5:30am to catch the train to Innsbruck! Oh, and me not being myself after getting run down from Karneval weekend....I forgot my passport!!!! And my toiletry bag! So not like me. I was SO worried I wasn't going to get on my plane, but then they didn't even check any ID! Thank god. The good thing about the European Union...
Anyways, had a sleep-filled train ride to Innsbruck, where I at one point encountered a very scary blue-mouthed druggy guy. Sad, because he looked super young too. Incredibly scary though, with this blue dye all over his mouth and lips. He sort of passed out in the booth next to me (thankfully not mine!) and when the train stopped, the train employee called some paramedics and they took him out and were talking to him. Christian told me that in Austria, the government gives junkies the option of a safer, less potent version of heroin that dyes their mouth blue to identify them. I think it also helps weed them off of it..? I could be wrong though. But some people go to the doctor and hide the blue pills under their tongue, and then go sell them in the street, so some people still overdose (such as this guy...). I think I am going to have nightmares about the blue people.
It was so good to see Christian again. He picked me up from the airport, took me to a ski rental place, and then we stopped at his apartment. He was in the middle of renovating it, so it was covered in dust and didn't have a proper bathroom yet (although he really tried to have workers come in and install everything while we were skiing, though it didn't work out quite as planned). So we had a dusty weekend with a new toilet, but no shower or bath. You can get pretty creative with "showering" when all you have is a kitchen sink and a bath with no running water upstairs... it was funny. He will probably cringe that I posted this (if he reads it), but it was too funny I just had to.
Friday and Sat we skied at two resorts in the Alps surrounding Innsbruck, which is a town jammed in a valley between the mountains. The hills looked right down on the city, only a short drive away. So jealous that Christian can just take a quick drive to go skiing in a great resort right after work! It's super cheap too! Only 30 or so EUR for the whole day, and Christian has a pass he can use at all surrounding resorts which is something like 280 EUR for the entire year, including mountain biking in summer! One of the resorts started right at the edge of the city, and you actually could ski over a tiny path of snow which crossed some streets/parking lots near the bottom to get to the gondola. There's some good steeps too. For some reason my legs were just exhausted that weekend, so I was kind of pathetic at skiing. There was lots of snow though (although it was very warm so was a wet snow), and great weather, nice clear view of the city and the gorgeous mountains surrounding. It was hilarious though, you could totally tell you were in Austria, land of the hard-cores, because people were walking up the slopes with backcountry skis, instead of taking the chairs/gondolas. We thought about doing that (Christian does it regularly), but based on the skiing shape of my legs that weekend, it was a good thing we didn't!
We also spent a lot of time catching up, went out dancing a couple nights, explored the very cute downtown area, got some more gelato...haha. Oh, and I tried some GREAT Austrian food for lunch at the ski resorts. One was a ball of breaded cheese floating in some soup which was delicious, and the other was a macaroni and cheese-like dish with crispy onions on top. I will have to ask Christian what they were called. Was very sad to say goodbye at the end, but was a really great weekend. The lack of passport almost got me in trouble on the flight back, but a little explaining to the supervisor and a driver's license got me through. My flight was delayed and I was afraid I would miss my connection in Hamburg, but I ended up just making it. Unfortunately, my bag didn't...so I was without a toothbrush/deodorant (the only toiletries I remembered to bring with me)/phone charger/plug adapter/runners/etc for the night and Monday. My suitcase arrived last night at 12am!! I was verrry happy to have it back.
Now I am recovering again, after an active weekend with almost no sleep. One more crazy weekend to get through in Ireland with some friends, then I am taking it easy!!!
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