Karneval der Kulturen

Today we went to the Karneval der Kulturen, the "Carnival of Cultures" in Kreuzberg, the city district with the most diversity. Every year they have this huge parade and a crazy fair to go along with it. The fair is all weekend, with different stands set up with food, alcohol, jewelery, clothes, etc.
The parade is made up of about a hundred different groups, from different countries or different kinds of music, some are sponsored by various organiztions in the city. The parade went for nine hours, to give you an idea of how much stuff there was. Most of the music was electro, and people would jump in behind their favorite floats and just follow them, dancing to the music.
There was so much alcohol everywhere, everyone drinking and dancing, I couldn't believe how many people there were. The newspaper said it is about 850,000 people watching the parade.

The food/drink: You could get a 0,33 Liter beer for 1 or 2 euros, lots of people were drinking mixed drinks (for some reason I think caipirinha is the most popular), and the most common foods were probably Wurst, grilled steaks, crepes, and Indian food, chicken. Michael and I also got Pfannkuchen, which is what non-Berliners call "Berliner," the jelly donuts Kennedy made so famous. :) Here's a picture to the left.





And some people even sorted their recycling. :) haha, not everyone, there were bottles everywhere...in Germany there is a deposit on the bottles, so there were also people going around and collecting the beer bottles, they will earn money when they return them.