Flags everywhere!

Around June 8th or so suddenly all of the German flags came out: on people's cars (both the kind that stick up from the windows and side view mirror covers that look like flags), on buildings, hanging from balconies, in restaurants.  It was like the German equivalent to the 4th of July in the US.  So which national holiday were we to celebrate?  The Euro Cup of course!

Fussball (football) is a big deal here.  Regular games are big enough, but the Euro Cup is of course even bigger.  Not only flags come out, but so do huge TVs.  Every restaurant, bar, food stand, and sometimes the bakeries suddenly has TVs for people to hang out and watch.  And they put them right outside so people can enjoy sitting outside, having a beer or dinner, and watching the game.  (Berliners love to sit outside and now that it is warm and the sun is out till 10pm, no one wants to sit inside.)  You can pretty much walk down the street and not miss much of game as you walk from viewing one TV to the next.  Or you could go to public viewings at Tempelhof Airport (yes, the airport of the Berlin Airlift is now a place to watch the Euro Cup) or at Brandenburger Tor.  We have heard that at Tempelhof you may not get within viewing distance even if you go an hour and a half before the game, so we haven't bothered.

2 TVs from our seats at dinner

And in case you don't have the TV on, you can often tell what is going on by the yelling.  As I write it is the quarter final game between Germany and Greece.  The whole neighborhood is going crazy over near misses and exciting plays.  You can hear people cheering and shouting.  For the last Germany game when they scored people were setting off what sounded like cannons nearby.  And now Germany scores to make the score 1-0.  Tonight's choice noise-makers seem to be air-horns and fireworks!

 So as you can see it is a bit like the 4th of July...cheering, cannons, fireworks, and national pride.

Go Deutschland!

Halbzeit Eier (Half-time eggs)

Karneval der Kulturen

No frowny faces allowed

On the weekend of Pentecost Sunday, which in Germany is a 3-day weekend, Berlin celebrates the cultures that make up the city.  Last weekend was the 17th Karneval der Kulturen.  It is an all weekend event starting on Friday and ending Monday evening.  The main event is the parade on Sunday.

The Karneval takes place between Mehringdamm and Hallesches Tor, so is pretty close to where we live.  This made this festival even better for us because we could just walk over and back whenever we felt like it.  It is also completely our type of things as other than the parade it was a giant food festival with food from all over the world. 

Bigos (Beegohsh)- Note in back is an AK47 of vodka

Best sign

We tasted many cultures over the weekend, fitting in as much as possible by only ordering one of anything and splitting it.  We had Mexican burritos, South American empanadas, Polish pierogies, Polish Bigos (sauerkraut and meat, rather like what we had in Prague), Indian samosas, Spanish chorizo, Dresdener Handbrot (bread filled with cheese and mushrooms topped with sour cream), a trendy chicken, raisin, and date wrap, German strawberries in cream, Egyptian Kushari, Jamaican funky chicken, African BBQ chicken, and Ghanan fried plantains and beans. I really can't pick a favorite.  Just writing about makes me miss the festival.  Sadly many of the stands do not have restaurants in Berlin.  As far as drinks went, we had coconut juice straight from the coconut (so Hawai'i), Brazilian caipirinhas, Southern German Schwarzbeir, Mexican Corona, Cuban Mojitos, German Strawberry Bowle (in this case a whole cup full of strawberries in a bit of strawberry wine), an unsweetened strawberry and rhubarb smoothie, and West African palm beer.

African BBQ

The parade was also quite an experience.  It was the longest parade I have ever known.  We walked down Gneisenaustrasse, which was the parade route, until we ran into the parade.  Then we walked back to find a good place to watch and waited for it to catch up to us.  Some of the parts of the parade where just what you would expect of a Culture Parade:  the name of the country on the sign, and people singing and dancing in traditional garb.  However, there were also some skits going on that were very odd and at least one theater group that seemed to be doing interpretive dance as they went.  There were clearly a lot of dance schools in the parade showing off a variety of types of dances.  We also saw a Vegetarian group with a giant fake pig and many signs telling us why we should not eat meat.  In general, it was a very random parade.  And we didn't see it all.  We stayed for about 3 hours and then went home for a while.  We then went back to meet up with some friends, thinking that the parade would be over.  We found them at parade group number 50 (about 20 past where we last saw).  And this was apparently only half-way.  As we started getting to parade group 65 the gaps between them started getting bigger and bigger.  As it was 6:30 and we had first started watching the parade at 1:30 or so we gave up and moved on for the evening.

Blue Dragon

Overall, I really enjoyed the Karneval der Kulturen.  I only wish it happened more than once a year.  But it is something to look forward to next spring!