Mainzzzzzz

Hello everyone! Friday was St.David's Day in Wales, I was keeping up tradition (ish) by wandering round Trier in my Welsh rugby shirt and making welsh cakes (ish) on a waffle iron.

Finally got round to this post, have figured out how to keep up with the posts: downloading a notepad app and writing them on my phone on the 40 min train ride to or from work.


I've been writing this on a few mornings in late Feb. It's finally light enough to see something other than pure blackness out of the windows, so I've been enjoying admiring the early morning 80 meter coal barges puffing their way up the Saar. I can't help but wonder how the driver, situated at the very back, gets round the many corners of the windy Saar. I have trouble controlling a shopping trolley in a supermarket.


Anyway, I'm rambling. So, starting on Thurs the 7th of February the German FastNacht festival kicked off and so began one of the best weekends of my year abroad so far. The Thursday is called Weiberdonnerstag, which is traditionally a day when women are in control. What it really means is you're allowed to go up to any man wearing a tie, cut a bit off and get a kiss for your trouble.


Sadly I didn't take part it this odd tradition, but my flat did hold a pretty sweet flat party, costumes and all. We all decided to go as animals: I was a sheep, Natalie a peacock (Pfau in German), Mari as the blind mole (off a tv programm I think) and Anne as a rather spectacular owl.

See photo below.

Also, check out this photo of Tylor helping me clean the floor the next morning. I had never seen it so bad!

The next day I did the 4 and a half hour train journey to Marburg, Hessen, to see Vic, a uni friend.


She's working at a variety of uni libraries there (see her blog here) but hangs out with the Erasmus students there, who we met. Marburg is SO beautiful! I would (and have) recommend it to anyone for a day trip or weekend away: see pics below.

After that I jumped on a train to Frankfurt am Main on my way to Mainz. The train station at Frankfurt (oh and Giessen on my way to Marburg by the way) triggered strong flashbacks of mine and Soph's Maggot Farm adventure back in the day. Might make a flashback post about that next.


So, Mainz. To explain, you know how in Britain we have the scrummy tradition of making and eating pancakes just before Lent starts? Well instead for the 5 days before most of Germany including and south of Cologne dresses up in costumes, consumes large amounts of alcohol on the streets, generally goes crazy and throws big parades through towns, villages and cities. This also apparently has something to do with the end of winter too, its a confusing time of year.


Anyway this all culminates on the Monday with huge 4-5 hour long parades in Cologne and Mainz, and I was lucky enough to head to Mainz with Tylor and Whitney to stay in the apartment of Tylor's friend, which even more luckily overlooked the parade route.


The parade kicked off at 11.11 am (people having claimed the best spots -meaning something to lean on- and started drinking from 9am). It consisted of a mixture of music bands, floats with political messages and floats with people chucking out sweets and bouncy balls- check out the pictures below.

Reference to a traditional song sung on this day: "Komm, wil woll'n den Eisbär seh'n" (Come, we want to see the polar bear)

Note the people on the float chucking sweets.

Bit of a political one there...

With 3 sets of large windows overlooking the parade on the first floor we had the opportunity to test the throwing skills of the sweet-throwers in attempting to chuck us sweets through the window, to mixed results. Fun activity in its own right though.

You are supposed to shout "HELAU" and wave your arms in Mainz and "ALAAF" in Cologne. Why, sadly no one actually knew...

Once the parade was finally over we had a little break (ate food and played drinking games) before heading out to the huge street party in our costumes.


2 highlights of this more restful part of the day were:


1) watching the army of street cleaning machines and people take to the road immediately, leaving it in spotless condition after 20 kind. This was almost as entertaining as the parade itself, and was summed up amusingly by Tylor's friend saying "Germans love to PAAARTAY. But then we must clean."


2. The discovery that amaretto and fanta is lecker (tasty).

The great cleanup effort

To be honest, the less said about the evening the better (plus this is getting rather long). I will leave you with 3 excerpts:


1) Whitney finding a giant box costume, donning it, then, unable to see her feet, falling over the kerb and lying helplessly and tortoise-like on her back on the floor. Creased.

2) Me donning aforementioned giant box and dancing to LMFAO's 'I'm Sexy and I know it'. My movements being a bit restricted this basically consisted of me jumping up and down and wiggling the costume from side to side.


3) Tylor and Whitney hunting out the side of an old car bed in Sparmobel (old furniture) on the street and borrowing it. Cue all 3 of us running along the empty streets making race car noises and pretending to crash into our friends. So immature but so much fun.

Sadly said car had an accident overnight. Devastated.