Over a month ago now, Josh and I took a vacation over the pond to visit some of Josh’s cousins and family. While we both would have rather vacationed in the spring or summer, we decided on February because of a popular tradition known as Fasching. What a fun time!

Arriving in Germany, we were picked up by Josh’s Aunt Nancy and the plan was to hide out for the day as we wanted to surprise Josh’s Uncle Hansel in his bar that evening. Exhaustion took over and we ended up surprising Hansel almost immediately. This worked out well for it gave us time to settle in, rest and get ourselves refreshed before going to Hansels bar that evening for good home cooked schnitzel and time with the family.

We were warned ahead of time just how much fun Fasching is and how we would be busy non-stop with Fasching activities. Sure enough, we were! Fasching is a German Holiday that has some religious background but is also comparable to the combination of the American Mardi Gra, Halloween, and New Years Eve festivities . Three full days of dressing up, parades, candy, and drinking all while screaming “halau” to every individual you come in contact with. Sound a bit goofy, it really wasn’t but it did take the two of us some time to not feel like idiots. Josh and I already stuck out since we couldn’t speak much German, so stick us in a funny costume, send us to a parade and tell us to say “halau” to everyone we really felt a bit silly – we overcame that rather quickly!

The parades were a lot of fun. I, along with Tami, Diana and Monika (Josh’s cousins) dressed up as Pigs. Yes you read that correctly, we became known as the 4 Little Piggies! It was really cute and unlike most American costumes on Halloween, our costumes were handmade by Nancy ((check out the piggie pictures at our photo album)). They were warm to, we wore them over our regular clothes and being that it was February and rather cold out, we stayed nice and toasty for the 3 days we were known as the little piggies. Josh also dressed up as an Elf, we got a kick out of his costume as well because he managed to wear it over top of his “Beast from the Tundra” – he did look like a lumpy elf! The one thing Josh and I both thought was that we’d feel so out of place and just get looked at constantly because of being in these costumes, but by Monday Rosenmontag we felt right in place and really if you weren’t in some sort of costume on Monday you looked out of place and got more stares from not being dressed up then those of us did walking around in pink fur! 🙂

Josh and I both really enjoyed the Fasching experience and while I could go on to tell stories I’ll let the pictures located within our album show you how much fun we really had!

Some of the other experiences we had while in Germany include:

• The mixing of everything imaginable: beer and coke, beer and sprite, wine and water with gas – really the list goes on and on to the point that Josh asked for apple juice and coke the one time!
• Good Schnitzel: seriously yum!
• Those blinds in our room: we couldn’t tell if it was day or night. Our first day there we slept from being exhausted and woke up at 4 in the afternoon and the room was pitch black!
• All the bar folk: German style Cheers! Everyone knew everyone!
• The Muppet
• Fasching Music ((hopefully we’ll have some to share in the future))
• All the wonderful children: Natasha, Lizzy, Joshua, Noah, Nicholas, Marko, & Rocco
• Mainz
• Mainzel Mannchen
• Rothenburg ob der Tauber: an old town located 2 hours from Nancy and Hansels. We took a day trip there our last day. Very enjoyable and unique. The town is surrounded by a wall and we were able to walk up in the wall.  Cute quaint shops and eateries!

Our trip to Germany was very much enjoyed and it was so hard for us to leave to come back home. We can’t wait to return and spend time with the family again, it was a vacation that we thoroughly enjoyed and will remember forever. Thank you Hansel, Nancy, Tami, Andres, Diana, Thorston, Patrick, Monika and all the children for taking the time to spend with us and show us Germany and Fasching, we never imagined a holiday quite like that – Thank you!