It's Köln part two, and I'm about to plummet straight down the rabbit hole. Face first. No crash mats.
Events kick off, as I part with my erstwhile ally of the employed variety, and head for breakfast with the others. It's about 8am and there are already people drinking. I can't think of anything worse than beer for breakfast, but by George, they're doing it anyway. The music is pumping out of the bar at full volume and as we head to the town centre to completely miss the countdown to 11am, we see that everywhere else is exactly the same.
Every pub and bar is thrown wide open, and blaring out music, and Bristol and I pop into one to grab some water and receive our first mind-f*** of the day. There's a boy at the bar, who turns to talk to us. He's tall, Germanic, well-suited, with a toy gun, an Afro, and in blackface. You read that right. No one here's looking twice but it's not a costume choice we see much in England. In the words of a famous fat guy... It's not wrong, but we just don't do it. And I think the American was even more taken aback than me Then his partner in crime emerges from the toilets, with a dark mullet, and an identical suit, and then they both put on their shades and draw their toy guns and strike the iconic pose and "Oh THAT'S what you're going for? You two really shouldn't split up if you take this act overseas..." Although I'm sure Tarantino would get a few morbid kicks out of your fate if you tried it in downtown New York. (I imagine)
After this, the costumes come thick and fast, and we start to feel like berks for being the only ones NOT dressed up. The streets are thronged with famous people, smurfs, army uniforms, computer game characters, cult classics, drag queens, animals of all shapes and sizes, various calibers of superhero, presidents, popes, nuns, Disney princesses, pokemon, fruit, fairytale heroes, and girls using "dressing-up" as an excuse to show the world their underwear. Everywhere that isn't selling food or booze or facepaint is empty, if not completely shut, and we're quite content to simply embrace the sensory overload and ensuing system shock, and walk around the city for a few hours, drinking beer and eating (what else?) various breads and meats.
Fiesta in Spain had nothing on this party. It was a full scale, citywide rave, and it wasn't even 3pm. It shows every sign of carrying on all day and night, and we're vastly unprepared for that, so we all head back to the hostel to chill and take turns napping in the one bed that one of us could afford, in preparation for the all nighter we're about to pull.
There's a guy in a chimpanzee mask in the hostel. He's actually acting like a crazy aggressive monkey, with whoops and screams, and the motions... and well, if I wasn't already terrified of chimps, I would've become so pretty quickly, because that was nightmare-inducing. We vaguely befriend him in order to make him take off the mask and thus prevent our evolutionary knee-jerk reaction of clubbing his horrifying self to death whilst simultaneously cacking our keks. It works. His friends also join us. It's 8pm by now and they are druuuunk. As is the rest of the city.
I feel I must point out here that if anything of this magnitude involving alcohol ever happened in England, the place would have degenerated into a warzone well before this point. Not here. Maybe it's because Köln really seems to treasure it's carnival. Or maybe it's just really hard to punch a guy dressed as a banana. Either way, I don't see a single brawl, which is mightily pleasing. :)
From here on out, generic drinking and dancing and street partying ensued. I saw Snow White kissing The Pope. A troupe of slutty Apples win the "Most Original Trampy Costume". And I found myself flirting with a man dressed as a duckling, before my hind-brain kicked in and pointed out that fully-grown men in duckling costumes are kind of ridiculous. Time to disengage, and after putting the kiddies and Graham to bed at 6 in the morning, and escorting Bristol to her airport-bound train, I head straight to a little town called Aachen.
Now for those unfamiliar with the layout of the ancient Roman Empire (shame on you!), Aachen used to be the capital of the whole of Europe. And that was for precisely one reason; the then Emperor Constantine loved to dip into the hot springs there after he'd partied too hard. Being of particularly noble stock also, I figured that I owed it to myself to follow suite. And since it was only €15 to laze in the warm waters for the entire day, it was a pampering I could afford. And boy was it worth it.
Once I'd rejuvenated, I strolled through a very pretty sunset in a very pretty Aachen, feeling very pretty. Back in Köln, after a HEFTY nights sleep, Sunday and Monday were spent chilling and eating crepes and drinking chocolate beer from the chocolate museum with Ellie, Haley and Dylan, before we went our separate ways. A very successful week all in all, and a sincere thank you to the guys who joined me in the mind-boggling adventure. But now I hear the siren call of the North, and the city-harbor of mist and light that is Hamburg.
See ya Köln, it's been a blast!
Love, lonesome roses, and basic meditating frogs,
Pip