From Karneval to Skiing the Alps and Back again

From Karneval to the Alps and Back Again from Brittany Sobel on Vimeo.
These past 5 days have been a combination of mayhem, relaxation, and adventure. Thursday was the first official day of Karneval, and included a smaller parade in Beul (the town right outside of my house), and a larger celebration in the city of Cologne. Most everybody dressed up in full body furry suits to stay warm. I loved the costumes, as most of them were homemade and highly original! We saw dressed up Broccoli, Kangaroo, and many Smurfs. The Karneval celebration typically starts off with an hour long parade each day for 5 days, where the people on the floats will throw out lots of candy, and people in the crowds yell out "Camela!" to attract the candy toward them. After the parades, people hit up the pubs and party literally all night!
The celebration goes on for a week, however, I knew that it was going to be a little too much for me, so a few of my friends and I decided to escape to the alps for a few days! We took a train down to Kitzbuhel, Austria and skiied for 3 days. We found an incredible hotel package that included 2 nights stay in a 4 star hotel right on the slopes, access to the sauna, steam room, pool, tanning salon, 2 gourmet breakfasts, and 2 outstanding dinners, and a lift pass for the mountain for each day!!! We really lucked out and had an absolute blast!
The alps were quite challenging for me to ski as they mostly consisted of huge open meadows of moguls, and more powder than you can possibly imagine. Every night the Alps get over 4 feet of fresh snow, and during the day the conditions are great! I skied in just a simple cotton long sleeve shirt and my jacket and was perfectly warm! We packed in 3 long days of skiing and completed our days with some relaxation in the spa center, a nice meal, and "apres skiing" which is after skiing. After skiing is very famous in Austria, and basically just consists of going to the pubs and meeting new people. We went to an awesome one where we met a group of 20 Netherlanders. The group bought us drinks all night long until I did the running man dance on stage to Vanilla Ice. LOL Sorry but I don't have that on video...perhaps some other time!
Today was the last day of Karneval.... I dressed in fun colors and went to Cologne for the big finale parade along with 800,000 other people and managed to score 3 roses and another bag full of Candy otherwise known as Camela!