New This Week, Part 8

Sorry for the delay, again. Carneval's going on here in the Rheinland, and although I'm not as actively participating as many others, things are a bit out of sync. Today's "Rosenmontag", and although it's not an official holiday, don't even bother showing up at work if your office is here or in Cologne. Nobody's going to be there.

Anyway, let's get to the news.

1. Place: Antenne Düsseldorf Office
On "Altweiber" (Thursday), which is something like a regional holiday, my colleagues and I went to the Antenne Düsseldorf (local radio station) office to say hi and get drunk. We managed both. :)



2. Event: Tuntenlauf on the Königsallee
On Saturday, we went to the "Tuntenlauf" (drag queen run) to Düsseldorf's prime shopping mile, the Königsallee. Several people had told me about this event independantly, so I decided it would be worth going. But I didn't go by myself, no no no. I took Amalia, some friends and even the parents of one of them to come along.

We paid a euro to get in but that's fine because the organizers spend the money on charity work, AIDS-related matters and such.

The event itself was horrible. We stood there in the freezing cold, and the stage program left a lot of room for improvement. Two not very funny fat drag queens bitched about uninteresting topics, made a lot of insider jokes, and the pre-acts were far from great. It took forever for the actual run to start, and when it did, it was, frankly, disappointing.

What was equally hard to take was that the beer shacks were on the other side, with tons of people in between so you couldn't easily go over and get a drink. Also, and only god knows who thought of this, the toilet coaches had been placed outside the fences, and if you went outside to pee, you didn't get back in. Obviously a lot of people peed into the düssel, the little river right there that gave Düsseldorf its name.

Alright, alright. It's nothing in comparison to last weeks, I know. But it's at least something. Be back next week with more. :)