Karneval!

This weekend in Berlin was Karneval der Kulturen weekend! This is an annual event in Kreuzberg area of the city, which usually coincides with one of the bank holiday weekends. We had been hearing about this weekend since we got to the city six weeks ago. Nearly everyone we have met has said to us 'you can't miss the Karneval', so we were really looking forward to it.

It's basically a 3-day knees-up to herald in the summer, with a parade and music and food. Whole streets are shut off and everyone comes out to celebrate the arrival of the blessed sunshine. It's all very tribal and lots of fun. We decided to head down on Saturday with our new friend Kanako. Kanako is in our language class and is from Osaka, Japan. She has very good English so we communicate in a strange mixture of English and German, or Germlish as you might call it.

We arrived at about noon to Blucherplatz where all the stalls were and it was already very packed. There were people as far as the eye could see. I think we spent a good two hours wandering around and we didn't even see the half of it. The festival is about celebrating all the different cultures in Berlin so in the square there were vendors selling food from as farflung places as the Sudan to Sweden. There were lots of street performers - breakdancers, bellydancers etc. - and vendors selling all kinds of clothes and knick-knacks. Unfortunately the battery to our camera died so all these pics are courtesy of Kanako's camera.

Here is a pic of Kanako and Eric with their new sunglasses that they bought from the grumpiest man in the world (honestly, it was like he wanted to keep all his sunglasses for himself). Anyway, the glasses were super cheap 5 euros, you can't go wrong! Eric says this is his home-boy pose.

Part of the concourse was an organic market where all the stalls gave free samples of organic goods. We basically had our lunch here - we got lentil stew with rice, chocolates, coffee, cake. All for free! This is a very happy Eric testing an organic beer. I have figured out that Eric's favourite four-letter word in the whole wide world is 'F-R-E-E' - check out that grin!

And lastly this is a very nice picture of the two of us that Kanako kindly took. We were there for nearly four hours and left nicely tired and full. Viva la Karneval!