On Wednesday (5th March) we had the opportunity to take part in our volunteer’s presentation about Germany.
We were lucky because Valerie held the presentation in English for the English group and German for the German group so their language skills could be improved. Valerie categorised the information into several groups.
The origins of the festival season its most important days and their names were the first topic. We recognised the days which are celebrated in Hungary too such as Ash Wednesday and gluttonous Thursday, and the customs surrounding these. We were most interested in fasting after which delicious sweets are eaten as we saw on the pictures. In addition Valerie explained about the regional differences in the season.The programmes on the festival were explained in detail including choosing a King, council the parade and the traditional costumes. We were most interested in the men wearing masks and plane costumes. We found out that this unusual costume was chosen to protest against a construction of an airport and the noise pollution it will cause. The parade is almost 7km long and takes 4 hours and the paricipants are over 10000. We found cutting the men’s ties off an interesting part of the festival. At the end three dancing videos were shown which were hilarious. We couldn’t stop laughing on the performance of the men dressed in tutus.
All in all we all felt that we would like to visit Germany, especially Cologne and Mainz are the most famous, this time of the year.
Group P3