Cologne: Immigrants’ Gala puts new spin on Carnival
Cologne’s Carnival celebrations, which begin in earnest Thursday, Jan. 31, top off months of gala soirees that are often incomprehensible to the city’s non-natives. But one party re-examines the traditional fetes.
Cologne during Carnival can be terrifying for the uninitiated. They are faced with drunken, costume-clad Karneval enthusiasts singing — and staggering — their way down the streets and partaking in the sort of debauchery they’ll never admit to once the celebrations have come to a close.
Part of the festival traditions are the Sitzungen. Literally “sessions” or “sittings,” the more traditional ones are gala events; the smaller, more alternatives ones resemble comedy or variety shows composed of skits with performers making liberal use of song and dance to mock politicians, each other and themselves.
For American singer and actress Victoria Riccio, who came to Germany nearly 20 years ago, the introduction to a Sitzung was a shocker.
“When I first came here, I went to one of these events and didn’t understand a word, but at one point, the people on stage took off all their clothes and jumped around naked,” she said. “I thought ‘oh my God, where have I landed?’ I loved it right away. For me it was like Halloween and the best party you’ve ever been to, all wrapped into one.”
Still, despite the lure of scantily-clad hedonists and the beer that flows abundantly, Karneval and its Sitzungen can make non-Germans feel like outsiders due to all the inside jokes about local politics and heavy use of the local dialect.
So Riccio, along with emcee Hektor Haarkötter and a host of others, started their own show called the “Immigrantenstadl.” It’s a gala put on for and by immigrants — which in Cologne can also mean anyone born outside the city limits.
Read the rest of this (very interesting) article: Deutsche Welle, 31 January 2008
and i went...
