What is 7 miles long, and lasts five hours?...a fasching parade!

Whew... just when I thought I could not possibly handle MORE Fasching, I went on a ten hour Fasching binge today. Monday is THE Fasching day though, so I dragged my butt outa bed and headed over the Mainz (the next town over) with Will and Stephanie -two of Josh's friends and now my friends, too!! :) --to watch the parade. Josh (sadly) had to work and met up with us later. Mainz is actually one of the biggest Fasching celebrating cities in Germany, and I can not POSSIBLY imagine any city doing anything bigger then what Mainz did. The parade was FIVE HOURS LONG. No, I am not not joking FIVE. Like one, two, three, four FIVE HOURS. I swear in America parades last like 40 minutes...I even googled it for comparison and the biggest US parade that I could think (the Macy's Day Parade) lasts 2 to 3 hours. And that's a national, televised parade... this isn't even nationally televised on the same level as the Macy's Day Parade (I don't think). Needless to say, we watched about two hours and moved on, but the parade itself stretches SEVEN MILES. I mean, I never even imagined a parade that big existed anywhere.

There are SO MANY PICTURES in this post. But I really did pick and choose. I think showing any less would not be doing the parade justice (and remember I only saw like 1/3rd of it!!!) so here ya go-

Pretty typical kid costume... adorable, right?

These are traditional fasching parade costumes

Some of the floats just did not make any sense to me at all. Like this one, for example.

Apparently (for some unknown reason) dressing up colonial was REALLY, REALLY popular. It seemed like every other group was dressed like this (minus the adorable fake dogs).

Mainz is a big wine making region, so lots of the floats were wine themed

Captain America! This kid was adorable, and later got really sad for some reason

Sad Captain America.

The floats threw out kettle corn instead of (or with) candy! :)

Annddd DONE. Seriously... (as I am sure you can tell) it was like the parade that would never end. But it was really cool and I am glad I got the chance to see something so awesome in action! Whew, I officially don't need to go to a parade again for at least three-five years! :)

After the parade we went to a dance club that was pretty fun: there was lots of American music that our group got pretty into including B. Spears, the Backstreet Boys, Spice Girls... & classics like the macarania and YMCA. It was funny that when the YMCA came on and we all did the little YMCA dance, NO GERMANS DID IT! At all. Not one. Apparently Germans never learned that dance?... Someone said it's because their alphabet is different or something, but I don't know... new mission: bring the YMCA to Germany!! :)
Overall, Fasching was a great time and I am so glad that I was able to experience it. It's definitely about one million times better then any Halloween festival I have ever been too... sadly. Maybe I just need to go to better Halloween parties or something, but I kind of doubt anything could top this five day extravaganza!

German playground & more Fasching :)

Josh and I went on a little walk yesterday at the park near his house. It was totally an Oregon weather day, and ended up being pretty awesome. We found a park that was pretty much amazing, it even had a zip line! German parks are so much cooler then American ones.

The playground had lots of cool things-that twisty rope thing was really hard! I couldn't do it (but Josh couldn't either). And on the other side of the rocket slide was a mini rock wall.

There were also carvings:

And there were little rope courses over the stream-

Talk about things that would NEVER happen in America. I don't know why it is but in Germany there are way more things you could get hurt on in public places that would not fly in America. It's awesome, and makes me feel bad for all the American kids that get sub-par parks when these German ones are so much better and more creative... and just when I was like "this is amaazzzinnng" there was one last little suprise:

AN IN-GROUND TRAMPOLINE. These German kids really are lucky, I'm totally jealous.

All and all it was a really beautiful day and we had a great time! Then we went & walked around downtown Wiesbaden and Josh bought a pair of baby blue chinos :)


We also went out to Fasching again last night,  here are my two favorite pictures. And yes, same costume, different day, that's how Fasching rolls :) Also, I never thought Josh and I really looked that much alike till I came here. Now I think we totally look SO alike, it's crazy!

For my Mom, she really wanted a picture of us hugging :) Love ya Mom! xo

Fabulous Fasching

I was lucky enough to be in Germany with Josh for Fashing (which actually last 5 days this weekend, and ends Monday). Fasching (also called Karnival in some places) is basically like German halloween, but with out all the skin tight costumes- it seems to be more about fun. I saw so many lady bugs, bunnys, etc - all dressed up in the giant animal costumes it was awesome! It's also fun because (it seems like to me) everyone gets really into it: young people, old people: everyone is dressed up and having a good time.

I had been dragging my feet all this week on getting a costume because I had decided I wanted to be a pilgrim and I didn't really know how to make that happen. But (like magic) I was talking to my brothers upstairs neighbor/ my friend Emma about it and she said "actually...I don't know if you know this about me or not, but I do historical reenactments on the weekends for fun" (how awesome is that?!) and pulled out a totally awesome revolutionary war outfit that I wore. It was perfect!
There will definetly be more Fasching posts, then I am leaving for Paris on Tuesday! Yay!! I am very excited (and somewhat nervous) to start my next trip... it will be the first time I am traveling "alone" - well kind of. I traveled alone in Korea, but had the amazing Kelly and Mark to stay with at nights. But it will definitely be my first time flying RyanAir, (which I have heard is quite the adventure in itself!) and my first time staying in hostels with out someone else. So it should get interesting! :)