Monday, February 8, 2016
♫Karneval!
Di-di-di-di-di-di-di Karneval! ♫
This weekend has been
filled with joy and happiness. The clock strikes 11PM and now there’s only an
hour left, I just want to cling on forever. Exclaiming ‘karmelle’ over and
over, being greeted with ‘Alaaf’ & watching the parades, I feel we’ve
really been a part of German culture this weekend.
I had my first terrifying
foray into the world of face paint, brightly colored lipsticks, & oddly
colored eyebrows—and of course the internet was down leaving me without a
tutorial & completely in a tizzy, scampering from room to room with my
computer like a crazy person and sadly muttering ‘catastrophe’ every time I
passed a mirror (of which there are too many in this house, I must say).
Seriously. It was like living in the 1970s. So, I had to do things the
old-fashioned way and draw on what my grandmother calls ‘resourcefulness’…
& I succeeded!
That spate of time where
I had no idea what I was doing may have been the only time that day I actually
embodied my character (Sadness, from Inside Out), the rest of the day I was
jumping about & tossing candy & pushing Misha in his chair & handing
him candies to give out (and trying not to spill the juice! Every now and then
an echo-y voice would enter my head, ‘the juice, Ashleigh! Adjust the juice!’
Not unlike, ‘the force, Luke. Use the force!’ …I have an exciting life). On the
way home on the tram a drunk guy paused, gave me a funny look (&I had a
moment of nervousness), and started exclaiming to his friends, ‘Ein Schlumpf,
ein Schlumpf!’ (a smurf, a smurf!). It was quite funny. There was also a
particularly rambunctious group earlier that day singing ‘Lemon Tree’ at the
top of their lungs… YESTERDAY you told me 'bout the BLUE
BLUE SKY And all that I can see is just another LEMON TREE! …They were enthusiastic to
say the least. The entire tram was quiet to let them sing—though we were all
giggling to ourselves.
Chatting over dinner
(which was fantastic—the carrot, rice and chicken soup at lunch was too!) with
my friend’s host Mum I learned something interesting. In Germany the colour
blue represents hope, rather than sadness. Green represents true love, rather
than jealousy. Yellow represents envy, rather than joy. It’s funny to think of
something that seems so fundamental & natural being so vastly different in
another country. We ask if someone’s feeling blue, describe others as green
with envy, and talk of sunny personalities. In Germany it’s completely
different. Amazing. I never thought of those things as culturally coded.
I’ll be singing the songs
of Karneval for a long while, more on this weekend in my next post!
Thoroughly exhausted
& culturally enriched,
Ashleigh Kozicz
No comments:
Post a Comment