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Published: December 28th 2006
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Tommy’s roommate is a woman named Julianna. She is German, originally from a small town about an hour outside of Freiburg. Julianna is also a performer/actor/dancer/singer. While I was staying with Tommy, Julianna was working on atleast four or five different shows/performances, all at once.
One of her performance jobs was playing the role of a tap-dancing Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer in a holiday show for kids at EuropaPark, a sort of European Disney World (not to be confused with EuroDisney).
It is actually more akin to Epcot Center, in that each section of the park is meant to represent/replicate different countries and regions in Europe. I say ‘countries and regions’ because not every country was represented. Lithuania was one country not represented in Europa Park. And there was ‘ScandinaviaLand,’ which was to represent all of the Scandinavian countries. Russia was represented even though they are not a part of the EU, and other countries such as Poland were not. There is even a ‘Chocoland’ and an ‘Adventureland,’; last time I checked, those ‘lands’ do not exist in the real Europe (?!).
Julianna managed to get Tommy and I free tickets to her show, and because her show was
in EuropaPark, free tickets to EuropaPark as well.
The show was really fun and quite well-done. It was very over-the-top, very dramatic, very cheesy, but it was just perfect for kids. It even had a break-dancing Penguin! And I should be more specific about Julianna’s role, because in fact she played only the rear end of Rudolph and another actor played the head. AND it was a tapdancing Rudolph!
There were so many things about EuropaPark that both baffled and fascinated me. My first impression of the park was that it was very cheaply made, that everything (especially the theme rides) looked like they were bought at a yard sale held by Disney World five years ago. Like Disney World, EuropaPark has many colorful characters bouncing around the park. The mascot for the park is also a mouse, his name is ‘Europa Mouse’.
One example of the cheapness of the park was a rollercoaster that instead of being full-size was built very short, and to compensate you would circle the track three times to make one full ride. Another example was in one theme ride where we went through a sort of jungle/dinosaur room, made a loop, and
then came back through the same room but from the other side. The whole ride was in one room, just a big circle.
One thought I kept having during my fun-filled day in the park was ‘why would anybody come here?’ I honestly and truly had a good time, but it is confusing to me why anybody from Europe would go to a Park that is made to be a replica of Europe? You are already in Europe. I kept thinking to myself ‘this street is quaint and pretty, but not as beautiful as the real streets of Freiburg that I walked through this morning.’
Most people we passed in the streets were speaking German, and some French. I noticed that a large percentage of the park-goers were senior citizens who arrived on large tour buses. Another group that was at the park in large number were mentally disabled people. I think it could possibly have been a special day in the park, because there were lots of mentally handicapped people, many of which were accompanied by someone taking care of them.
Some other things I noticed about the park:
-there are no non-white cultures/ethnicities represented
in EuropaPark. Each section of the park represents a very white anglo-saxon protestant image of that given country (except Russia, which is distinctly different from the other sections/regions of the park). The only places blacks were represented were as slaves (on some of the theme rides) or on the ‘Safari’ theme ride.
-I find it interesting that the park was built right on the border between France and Germany. Why did they choose this location, besides its centrality within Europe? What does this say about the two countries?? What does it say about the audience that the park is trying to appeal to?
-The park is very small, yet there were many different ways of getting around the park, including an elevated monorail, an aboveground normal rail, a ground-level train, a shuttle tram/bus. Or you could walk (which would take about fifteen minutes to go from one end of the park to the other).
Here are a few pictures of Europa Park. And after all of this criticism, the pictures make the park look pretty beautiful!
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