Early on in the
semester, I made the mistake of telling my friends and family that I would
write postcards to anyone who wants them. In retrospect, I cannot recommend
doing this, because as of now I have bought, written, and sent 90 postcards.
And if I ever buy another stamp again, it will simply be to glare at it.
No, in all honesty,
I'm glad I did the postcard thing. I just wish I'd had more time to keep up
with writing all of them, rather than leaving most of it until the last week in
Deutschland. Tons of people have messaged me saying how happy they were to receive
their postcard in the mail, so that makes it all worth it in my opinion. And I
think the most difficult part was actually finding the right cards for the
right people.
Anyway, the
remainder of this post is going to cover something very early in the semester
that I recently realized I hadn't written about yet: Karneval!
Karneval weekend was
pretty fun, although I was all partied out by Saturday. By then I was ready to
just stay in, avoid the crowds, and get some studying done. To be honest, my
favorite part of Karneval was actually Wednesday night, before it had officially
started. My host family has amassed a large number of costumes over the years,
so my host mom was helping me go through all of them that evening. I asked her
what kinds of things other students usually dressed up as, and she gave me some
pretty good advice: "Most American students buy a costume and go to the
parades dressed in that. But lots of Germans wear traditional costumes or they
wear a mix of many costumes all at once. Karneval is very special like
that," she said with a smile. "You can go dressed as whatever you
like, even if it doesn't make sense, and no one will think it's weird."
I realized then that
I had been thinking of Karneval the wrong way. I was comparing it to the
closest equivalent of it that we have in the US, Halloween. America's version
of Halloween may be rooted in history, but that history is already very distant
from us, muddled by commercialism. The fact is, we really don't have anything
similar to Karneval, so I needed to approach it differently if I really wanted
to understand how Germans celebrate it. Once we were done pulling the boxes of
costumes out from the attic, my host mom explained the history behind some of
the more traditional costumes she had. Afterward, she went downstairs and I
began rummaging through the mountains of wigs and fabric. I looked at each
piece individually, weighing my options.
In the end, I
decided on a mixture of costumes they had: a traditional blue Tanzmariechen
skirt, a forest green vest made of velvet, a silk cape covered in stars and
crescent moons that once served as part of a magician costume for one of my
host parents' sons, and the classic Bavarian felt cap that bears a striking
resemblance to a wizard's hat. And of course, my black Doc Martens.
I went downstairs in
my Karneval costume mash-up and peeked my head into the living room, where Karl
was watching the football game and Gitti was reading a book. They both looked
up at me and I stepped into the room. A smile spread across both their faces.
And that when my truly favorite moment out of the entire semester happened:
Gitti nodded to me
and said, "This is the spirit of
Karneval."
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