Germany today, jacket tomorrow

So today Loretta and I were thinking we might go into Tilburg's centrum to try to find her a winter jacket. But one conversation led to another and by the time we finsihed talking things over with some room mates we decided the jacket can wait, might as well go to Koln in Germany where the carvival is supposed to be HUGE! It has been a busy week to say the least as Loretta arrived on Sunday smack dab in the middle of the carnival festivities going on in this southern Catholic region of the Netherlands. I will explain more about carnival once the festivities end on Wednesday so for now this post will be about my day trip to Germany.

Basically we wanted to see what carnival was like in another city besides Tilburg. We decided to go to Koln or Cologne because this place is supposed to be like the capital of carnival festivities... was it ever!! After eight of us took the train to Venlo which is just outside the border of Germany, we switched onto the German system for a relatively cheap group deal. It was so cool to notice the difference in landscape once we were inside Germany. First of all, I saw rolling hills for the first time in a month - in Holland, there are NONE. The arcitecture was slightly different as well. As we were chugging along, I couldn't help but think how five to six decades ago, this border area would have been so dangerous.

The first thing that greeted us when we stepped out of the Koln station was this MASSIVE cathedral! I have never seen a cathedral before in real life so this building absolutely blew me away! After consulting our Europe guidebook (nerdy I know) we realized that construction on this cathedral began in 1248!! Unbelievable. The parade just happened to be going on as we arrived so we tried to find some good spots to watch. The floats were hilarious and people were just EVERYWHERE! This parade was unlike anything I had ever experienced... first of all, they don't throw out those measly hard candies I was used to with the Santa Claus parade... no... they throw out full size German chocolate bars and boxes of truffles and beautiful bouquets of flowers! It was wild, but you had to be careful you were looking up or you might get hurt. Since we were so far away at first, I was a little over-eager to catch a chocolate bar so when one fell out of a little girl's hand, I snatched it up. I felt really bad afterwards and offered her some chocolate but I don't think she was impressed. This parade though.. it lasted for like six hours! We called it the never- ending parade and we couldn't get to the other side of town till it was over.

We indulged in some traditional food that day like bratworst and gluwein which is a hot red wine and really warms you up. Once we were able to get accross town we managed to find a warm tent to dance to some traditional German polka songs in. There was all ages in here from 7 to 77! Everybody was wearing kooky costumes (ourselves included! One of the most funny parts was when this giant pink rabbit started showing off his polka dance moves! We had the choice to either catch the 8:30pm train or the next one at 3 in the morning. By 8:00, we were all tired enough to go home and enjoyed the relaxing train ride back to Tilburg.