Fasching in Amstetten

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I'm an American and so I don't celebrate Fasching or Fastnacht or Karneval or whatever they call it in the German speaking world. I don't even really know what it is, what it stands for, or why people feel compelled to wear weird costumes on a Rosenmontag or a Faschingdienstag, but whatever. I went to Amstetten where an American friend of mine lives for a fasching party and for a ball. But the ball isn't really important; balls happen all the time in this land der Bergen. Fasching happens but once a year.

John, the friend of mine, and I went to a small gathering of randomly aged people. I don't really understand why I was there, but i wanted to wear a costume, so John decided to take me with him. He was nothing exciting to the average Joe...a basketball player...but I guess if you knew John it would be hilarious. He's the most unsporty person I think I know.

I decided to be creative as usual and be a bunch of purple grapes. I bought a few packs of balloons, sorted out the purple ones (about 40), blew them up, and safety-pinned them onto my already torn mesh laundry bag. I made leaves out of a green towel I happened to come up on. Sounds real janky, but it was actually a pretty good costume. The problem was, the Austrians didn't understand what I was, and one guy actually thought I was a big body of boobs, calling me Aphrodite, the goddess of seduction or something. Come on.

All in all, it was a pretty mellow party, but it was fun because we ended up singing all kinds of American folk songs and other random ones. I never really realized how heavy that song "Dey-Oh, Dey-Oh, daylight break, me wan go home" was. "Oh Clementine" is also actually a hilarious song when you get to the end of it, but I won't tell you and ruin the suprise. I think Austrians missed the meaning when one lady called the language of the "Dey-Oh" song "Nigger English" and didn't react to the end of Clementine's song.

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