One of my best memories in Mannheim was my trip to Cologne for Karneval. While I was fortunate enough to have a German friend living in Cologne, I was not the only exchange student from Mannheim making the trip. A lot of my other exchange student friends knew that this was one of those things that we had to experience in Germany. While most of the German students rolled their eyes and explained how tired they were of Karneval madness, all of the exchange students could not wait to experience it. Some of my friends just went for the day and night, while others spent the entire weekend there like I did. On the last night we all met up on the streets of Cologne to see the ghost parade at night. Everyone was dressed in ridiculous costumes and we followed the parade around immersing ourselves in the German tradition. These special German events are a really good way to bond and travel with other exchange students. These events sometimes don’t spark interest for the German students since their so used to them and can go any year. However as an exchange student you want to take advantage of all the German traditions and festivals that you can. Another festival that I went to was Frühlingsfest in Stuttgart. This was a small festival that felt like a combination of what we think of as carnivals (Ferris wheels, cotton candy, etc.) and Oktoberfest. There were beer halls and beer tents set up in the festival where they served large liter sized beers. I went for the day with a group of exchange students using the Baden-Württemberg pass by train. This was a really cheap way for all of us to go since we were in such a large group. We met a lot of German people there who were really excited to meet and drink beer with us. Seeing all of the lederhosen and traditional German food made us really feel like we were Germans for the day.
