Carnival Weekend

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Geo: 49.2367, 8.454

Carnival Pilippsburg Germany 2008

Recently Kim and I received an email from friends, Tom and Martina who live in Southern Germany to invite us to come to his home town to celebrate carnival in Germany.

Tom is a German Master Brewer who was hired to open Atwater Block Brewery in Detroit in the late 1990's. We met Tom through our friend Rich Walters who also worked at Atwater. On our first trip to Europe in 2000 we traveled with Rich and his wife Christine and had the pleasure of staying with Tom and Martina at their home in Philippsburg Germany. After our wonderful visit in 2000 Kim and I were trilled at the chance to return to spend time with Tom and Martina again.

Carnival in Germany - What Carnival Is: Germans have celebrated Carnival for centuries. Over 4000 German Carnival organizations exist and it is a favorite time of year for Germans to let their hair down with Carnival balls, parties and parades. Like Mardi Gras in New Orleans and Carnival in Brazil, the German Carnival provides the opportunity to play dress-up and generally revel in the streets. It is great fun and a great time to make new German friends. While the weather in February in Germany might not be the best, the atmosphere of Carnival will definitely warm you and you can definitely have fun getting caught up in the "crazy days" of Carnival.

Thanks to Ryan Air we were able to get a cheep flight out of London Stansted airport to Karlsruhe - Baden airport Germany. The Karlsruhe airport is a former Canadian air force base that is now used by just a few small airlines. What a great use of this old base. Lucky for us Tom lives close by and was able to pick us up and take us back to the airport. This area of Germany is on the Rhine River at the foot of the Black Forest, just a half hour from Alsace Region of France. As you can imagine this is just glorious area of Europe.

Because our plane left at 7am and it is a 2 hour drive to Stansted Airport we decided to drive to the airport Thursday night and spend the night a near by hotel and get the shuttle to the airport first thing in the morning. On the way to the airport, just north of the Thames River, is a large shopping area where there are just a plethora of great shops. There was Ikea, Costco, even a Borders Books. In every direction there were more and more shops. Well after being in the UK for a while now, I was starting to get Costco withdrawal. We made a stop and to our surprise they even accepted our Costco membership from the States. When we walked in it was just like being back in the USA. I told Kim that I felt like it was just like walking onto some sacred USA soil. Just like entering an Embassy. It was just like the Costco in the States with some minor differences. The beer, wine and liquor selection was much larger and they even had wine in 3 liter bottles. For the most part it was the same just more expensive, just like the rest of the UK. After doing some minor shopping we were off to our hotel. Being the "thrifty" person that I am I found this hotel on line and it had all the factors I was looking for. It was 5 minutes from the airport. We could park our car at the hotel while we were away. They provided transportation to and from the airport. They had reasonably positive reviews from previous guest and most of all the price was cheep. Well we checked in and were given the key to our room. Upon entering the room I set down our bags and sat down on the bed. To our surprise there was a loud crack and the bed dropped six inches. I looked at Kim with a look of fear and shock. She started laughing and said "you broke the bed". Well we both knew that there was no way that just sitting on the bed had broken it. It had obviously been broken previously and never repaired. I went to the front desk and we were promptly switched to another room. All the furniture in the hotel was from Ikea. We love Ikea and have several pieces of there furniture in our house but I think we all know Ikea has some furniture that is better then others. This hotel was filled with the cheapest furniture that Ikea sold. The bathroom shower water diverter was missing the knob and Kim got a head full of cold water first thing in the morning when she turned on the shower. Needless to say we will be finding a better hotel to stay at in the future.

Our Ryan Air flight took off without a hitch and after a one hour flight we were in Germany. Tom picked us up and just for fun we drove through France on the way to a Brewery his friend owns where we had breakfast. After breakfast we were off to see another one of Tom's friends who owns a butcher shop/brewpub where we had a pint and picked up some homemade air dried sausages for the carnival celebration. Next we were off to Toms Grandmothers house in Philippsburg to drop off the sausages and pick up costumes for Kim and I to wear to carnival. Tom had a great Monks robe for me to wear and a crazy old lady dress and hat for Kim to wear. Tom tried to explain the costumes that are worm to carnival but it was easier to understand once you just saw them. Some people wore old bath robs, old fur coats, even old curtains, it seemed there was no real rationale to what the costume was but it was more important to just dress up. Most of the people there would put colored or black paint on there faces, which was done to scare the children. On our way back to Tom's house we had to drop off a Keg of beer Tom brewed for the Prince of Carnival. After having dinner with Tom and Martina we enjoyed some fresh local beer and had an early night. We were up and out the door at 7:45 am for a long day of fun. We drove to the train station to pick up a friend of Toms' named Mark. Mark is also a brewer, a great guy, and speaks incredible English. We then headed back to Toms' grandmothers house for breakfast and to get ready for the celebration. At 10 am Tom tapped a keg of incredible Lager Porter that he had brewed just for the Carnival celebration. One after another Tom's friends showed up to the pre celebration. Everyone was in costume and we meet so many nice people. The Prince of the parade showed up to Toms to present Tom with a metal and to knight him with his royal scepter. At 2:00 Tom loaded up second keg of Porter onto a cart, grabbed a basket stuffed full of fresh pretzels and the homemade sausages and the group walked to the center of town for the Carnival Parade. This is unlike any other parade I have ever been to. It lasted 2 hours and was a party in its self. At the end of the parade we went up the street to the Unicorn restaurant where we had several more beers and dinner. It was great fun to spend the day with Toms and his friends and we took the party to the next town to another pub and continued to celebrate. After several more beers we got a taxi and headed back to Philipsburg to get a well needed night of sleep. We slept for about 11 hours, had breakfast and were then off to the airport for the flight home. It was a whirl wind weekend of costumes, beer, food, celebrating and friends. It was more fun then I had even imagined it would be. Those Germans know how to have a party.

Kim and I enjoy sending you these updates and we hope you enjoy reading them. We would love to hear back from you. Please feel free to spend a few seconds and let us know how you are doing. Thanks

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Comments

[ohappyjday]

Paint me green and call me Gumbi... Seriously, I am insanely jealous here! I'm a former AA colleague of Kim's, and this blog has been killer for my productivity at work. You guys have gone more fun places in the last three months than I
have in my entire life!!!!