Faschingsdienstag

Take the costumes of Halloween, the parades of Thanksgiving, and the masses of Time's Square on New Year's Eve, all mixed together into a German/Austrian mindset, and you might get a glimpse of what Faschingsdienstag is like. I was able to experience Fasching, also called Karneval or Fastnacht, the first Tuesday I was in Austria. It was probably the most surreal experience of my life.

The weekend I got to Graz was spent with my buddy, Anna, finding an appropriate costume for her. The Sunday and Monday was full of anticipation for the upcoming Tuesday. It was quite entertaining to explain Fat Tuesday to my non-American friends. The conversations led to a great improvement in their English vocabulary, which included "flashing", "mooning" and "streaking" (I thankfully didn't have to demonstrate for them to understand). Tuesday was the day we had all been waiting for. There was a fantastic Umzug that we watched while eating Wiener Schnitzel and drinking Gluehwein. It seemed like the whole city was watching, which made it quite difficult to get a good view as the many floats went by. As entertaining as the day was though, nothing could have stretched my imagination enough to encompass what I witnessed that night.

I went with 4 friends and 2 Austrian guides to the Hauptplatz that night. The crowd was so thick we had to walk through holding hands in order to not get lost. To wrap your mind around it, there was an area larger than a football stadium completely packed with costume-clad people. There was also a D.J. playing music, and the best part was squeezing through this whole group of Austrians who could sing all the lyrics to Whitney Houston's "I Want to Dance with Somebody". We managed to finally get to the party we were going to, where I was able to witness the whole crowd singing "We are the Champions". Unfortunately, we had class the next day, so we had to cut the night short. It was still one of the most memorable nights in Graz, and it showed me what Grazers meant when they said "Fasching ist Verrueckt!"