The end of February is Carnival season in Europe. For the past month in school we have been making costumes for the kids for a Carnival parade: the 3-5-year-olds are dolphins, the 1st & 2nd graders are octopi (try teaching kids to say that!), the 3rd & 4th graders are squid, the 5th & 6th grade girls are mermaids, and the 5th & 6th grade boys are fishermen. The costumes are all elaborate combinations of cardboard, poster board, paint, scraps of cloth, and lots of hot glue. Because most of the materials are off-limits to the kids (no box cutters to cut cardboard, no hot-glue guns) guess who gets to do most of the crafty-craftiness? Yours truly. I have become a model of an efficient squid-head-cutter-outer and fitter. Each squid head must be fit individually to each 3rd & 4th grader’s cranium; on a side note, I have noticed that noggin circumference has nothing to do with braininess. Anyways, back to the real reason for this post:
Because Carnival is coming up (Mardi Gras is Tuesday, March 8th), we had a 6-day break from school. I sheathed my hot-glue gun, booked it outta town, and headed to Deutschland. First stop: Mainz, to visit fellow-Linfield-’10-grad Ashley Bennett. Ashley is an English teaching assistant through the Fulbright program in a Volkshochschule in the city of Mainz, which, funnily enough, is the hometown of one of Linfield’s fabulous German professors. As soon as Professor Hommel heard that Ashley would be spending a school year in her old tromping grounds, she memorably exclaimed, “SIE KOMMT IMMER NÄHER!” (She’s getting closer and closer!)
Mainz’s main claim to fame is its amazing Carnival celebrations (“Meenzer Fassenacht” as pronounced in the local Mainz dialect. In the rest Germany, it’s either called Karneval, Fastnacht, or Fasching). The main events culminate with Rosenmontag, which is next Monday, but I unfortunately must be back at work by that time, so I settled for seeing some of the warm-up celebrations.
I got into Mainz on Thursday evening and met some of Ashley’s friends and roommates. She’s worked hard to create a regular life in Mainz, full of regular German friends and a regular German apartment. I loved hanging out with her friends and seeing her life, because I still don’t feel like I’ve actually become part of the community here on Mallorca. One day in school, I was sitting and waiting for the English teacher to tell me what she wanted me to do with her kids, and the head of studies walked in, saw me, and said “You looked so relaxed! You look like a tourist! You basically are a tourist here, riding your bicycle and all!” and then she swept out. She’s a very kindly woman, but tends to immediately say whatever she’s thinking, and that comment hurt. I’m working on integrating myself, I really am…but let’s get back to Ashley: I’d say her living-abroad experience is a success story.
Her apartment is on apparently one of the sketchiest streets in Mainz (I thought the street looked inviting and livable, instead of the living-in-a-museum feeling you get when walking through any historical city center). They live above a bar and across from a porno shop, and just down the street is a strip club (LIDO—this becomes very important later on in our story). I’m not saying that the strip club looked inviting or anything, but during the day, I didn’t any heebie-jeebies feeling from walking around Ashley’s neighborhood, although she told me that people from her school were astounded that she lived on that particular street. I felt welcomed by all of her roommates and I got a wonderful impression of Mainz.
On Friday, Ashley showed me the main sites of Mainz’s Altstadt (historical city center). At the risk of sounding like a guidebook, I’d describe the city as vibrant and gritty, full of hidden gems like the Chagall Windows in St Stephanskirche and the Gutenberg Museum.
On Friday night, we went to a Fassenachtsitzung. This Sitzung (“meeting”) could be described as being akin to an annual Elks Club meeting, where everybody shows up in costume in a ribbon-festooned gymnasium and they munch on pretzels and beer instead of on casseroles and lemonade. In all of the villages and suburbs around Mainz, a Fastnachtsitzung is held during the days leading up to the outdoor Fassenacht (Carnival) celebrations. Some of the teachers from Ashley’s school invited her to come to one of the Sitzungen in an outlying neighborhood. Ashley dressed up as a cowgirl and I went as a confused Barça fan (I wore an FC Barcelona buff, a USA jersey, and Linfield shorts; so basically I was just a soccer fan).
We met up with some of Ashley’s teacher friends and settled in for a night of entertainment. Choruses of local dancing women alternated with comedians who gave political speeches in rhyming couplets. Everything was done in Mainzer Deutsch (a dialect of German), not Hochdeutsch (standard German), and I’m not exactly up-to-speed on my regional German politics, so most of the jokes were lost on me. Ashley had told me beforehand about the intense rivalry between Mainz and Wiesbaden (a city just across the Rhein river from Mainz), and throughout the speeches, I did notice that lots of rhymes tended to end with something like, “At least we’re not as bad as Wiesbaden!”
Although I didn’t understand the finer points of the Sitzung, it was still a wonderful experience and a lot of fun. It was absolutely the least touristy and the coolest part of my entire German trip.
Check out this video to get an idea of some of the diversity of musical shows. In our little Sitzung it never got quite this exciting; all of the people with actual musical talent went to the bigger Sitzungen in bigger towns.
Or this video to see a huge hall full of celebratory be-costumed people
Or this video to see an example of a comedic duo—this is from the Cologne Carnival, not the Mainz Carnival.
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| Tanzen auf der Bühne |
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| One of the reasons that we went to this particular Sitzung was that one of the teachers at Ashley's school was apparently dancing as a part of this group. I never figured out which one she was, though. |
I’m not sure I’m emphasizing the cultural importance of these Sitzungen (meetings) enough. Carnival is THE #1 event in Mainz every year, and hundreds of people join Carnival Clubs (Karnevalvereine) and practice their skits, speeches, and dances. Young people and old people dance together, community members sit and drink at long trencher tables together, and these indoor Sitzungen are a large part of the Carnival experience. The other part of Carnival happens next Monday with outdoor parades and street parties, which are much more famous, but do not constitute the sole celebrations. Carnival technically lasts from November till March, and there are various celebrations and events throughout the 3-4 months, and it all culminates right before Ash Wednesday (March 9th this year). It’s a big deal.
So, this Sitzung started at 7:15pm, and ended at 1:15am. There wasn’t much else to do besides drink beer and clap at the end of every couplet and musical number. I started chatting with some of Ashley’s friends, and we were getting into an animated discussion about something—this was several hours (read “beers”) into the Sitzung, so I’m not really sure what we were talking about—but I do remember that the people next to us kept glaring daggers and eventually turned around and said in English, “Eef you vant to talk, go outside!” so that put a hold on our chumminess. At 1:15, the Sitzung ended, and I was like, “Well, that was great, bedtime, anyone?” but Ashley announced, “The party’s just getting started!” And indeed it was. The teachers moved en masse to a bar that was in the back of the gymnasium and the serious drinking started. I decided that I really couldn’t go any farther, so I asked Ashley if she could give me directions back to her apartment. I knew where the bus stop in this tiny town was, and I knew which bus to take, but I wasn’t exactly sure how to get from the bus station in Mainz to her apartment. She gave me her phone, told me to call one of her roommates, and sent me off. I strolled around the tiny town for a good hour, waiting for the 2:15 bus to come. When I got to the Mainz station, I struck off in what I hoped was a homeward direction. After about 20 minutes of aimless wandering, I eventually saw a huge neon sign proclaiming LIDO—the strip club!! I was home!—and after some intense searching, I found the doorbell to Ashley’s apartment. No answer. I called her roommates. No answer. I called a friend of hers that I’d met on Thursday. No answer. (This was now 3am, after all.) Eventually, one of her roommates picked up his phone and kindly opened the door for me. Ashley got in sometime after 5. All in all, I had a great first few days in Germany, and a great introduction to Mainzer Fastnacht (Meenzer Fassenacht)!
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