And I’m ILL. FANTASTISCH.

For those of you that don’t know, Rosenmontag is the highlight of the German Karneval, when all the floats ride down the streets and Germans *shock horror* DRESS UP. I have to say, I have seen very little fancy dress since living in Germany; in the U.K it’s pretty normal to see a fancy dress group out on any given night, particularly in student towns, but here it’s not so common. So the previously mentioned German Stare is at an all time high when fancy dress comes around! Except for Rosenmontag, when pretty much everyone is dressed like an idiot.

Thankfully Karneval has been going on since last Thursday, so we were out in Cologne on Saturday celebrating.

I was a mime! It was fun, if a little cold. It’s still snowing, I’m getting a little sick of it, and apparently there’s more to come on Thursday, ARGHH. Sadly didn’t make any of my costume, I was put entirely to shame on the craft front by Beef and Gray, who whipped up some awesome Cavegirl costumes from some fabric they bought in Karstadt – not a stitch was used, legends!

There was some epic fancy dress going on with Team Fabelhaft, that has to be said, one of my faves being Gravy in her polar bear outfit, which garnered a lot of attention! The mental bit was that she bought it in Ratio, a German supermarket. Beef and Gravy always joke that you can buy everything in there; I think now I truly believe them!

We made a pretty unlikely crew, I loved it! Ended up in an Irish bar in Cologne which meant that (despite my assumption that we wouldn’t actually get to see it) we saw the Six Nations match between Scotland and Wales. When we got there, Scotland were winning, meaning the Scots were loving the ‘Wales are RUBBISH’ banter… until Wales turned it around and ONLY BLOODY WENT AND WON!!! YES MATE! Cue a once stressed out Beef turning jubilant and us singing the Welsh National Anthem before rallying the troops to support our fellow Celts the Irish vs. the Frenchies. Sadly they didn’t win, boo, but the most important thing is that Wales did HAHAA!

Perhaps not the conventional Karneval, but I loved the mix of Germany and home that we had on Saturday.