Christine at the Holi Festival of Colours, Stuttgart, Germany

Another new Germany experience.  Sorta.  Yesterday I attended the Holi Festival of Colours.  I believe a Holi Festival is a religious festival, mostly in India.  In Stuttgart, it is more like a rave with the colours being the backdrop.  Well, the music sounded like a rave.  And everyone there, besides my friends, were around 18 or 20 years old.  We waited in line to get in, as most people are searched and they scan your ticket and match it to your id.  I didn't get searched or asked for an id.  Which is good.  Because I didn't think to bring mine.  I think this has to do with the age thing.  And everyone wears white.  You'll understand soon enough.

You go and trade your money for coupons, so you can buy bier and pommes (fries).  Luckily, you can trade the unused coupons back.  Then you get in line to pick up your "colours" which is purple, pink, blue, green, and orange/yellow colored cornstarch bags.  At 3pm, they had the first instance where you throw your colours.  Essentially, you throw the colours at your friends and decorate each other's white clothing.  This is what you think it looks like:

But this is more what you experience:

I wore my swim goggles for the event.  (Refer back to the age thing.)

Every hour they count down to throw the colours again.  I left after the 4pm throwing.  I had a Eurovision* party to attend.  At the end, they search you/pat you down to see if you are trying to smuggle colours out of there.  I got home and stripped off my clothes.  Cause you can't get the cornstarch off everything.  And showered.  The places the colour goes.  I think I will be seeing bits of it for a while.  All over my bathroom and maybe my floors.

None of these were photos taken by me.  There was no way I would take my camera to this event.  Thanks to all my brave friends.  And facebook.  haha

Christine


*Eurovision is a huge music event in Europe.  Kinda like American Idol.  There are various rounds.  And one big finale, with 26 countries singing.  Which I think all of Europe (or the 39 countries that voted) watches.  Each country has a singer that performs a song in the contest.  The songwriter has to be from the country.  After the 26 songs, the voting begins.  Then the countries allocate their points (this is done during the program) and a winner is announced.  The country that wins the contest hosts the next year's contest.  I loved the Greece's song:  Alcohol is free.  But Denmark won this year.