How in Gods name could we NOT have covered the Car­ni­val of Cul­tures, bet­ter known as Karneval der Kul­turen in Ger­man, so far on Find­ing­Ber­lin? One of the greatest and most vis­ited events in our city, a massive spec­tacle for fam­il­ies and hedon­ists alike, the Car­ni­val of Cul­tures offers everything for every­one and is the second kick-off into the sum­mer after the First of May in Kreuzberg.

The “Karneval der Kul­turen” is, as the name prom­ises, a mul­ti­cul­tural cel­eb­ra­tion tak­ing place in Neuk­ölln and Kreuzberg. And it’s a pretty old cel­eb­ra­tion as well, estab­lished in 1996, every year at whit­sun and usu­ally blessed by good weather (although not as reli­giously as the First of May — ser­i­ously, has any­one ever had a bad weather First of May?). Any­way, back to KdK: think of it as an explos­ive Love Parade minus the excess­ive drugs plus more fam­il­ies and lesser techno. But even more col­or­ful, dis­play­ing all those won­der­ful nation­al­it­ies and cul­tural her­it­ages Ber­lin has to offer. From huge Brazilian com­munit­ies to little Palestinian dance per­form­ances, the floats and wag­ons on the parade are an incred­ible sight. Peace, tol­er­ance and loads of diversity are the key mot­tos of the fest­ival — real­iz­ing how rare viol­ent encoun­ters hap­pen in Ber­lin, I tend to appre­ci­ate these fest­iv­it­ies even more. They teach the good life.

The Car­ni­val has become more than a parade over­time. It has been exten­ded to a four day event around Kreuzberg 61 with plenty of awe­some food from all over the world (of course we ended up eat­ing the habitual Köfte. I mean you can’t go wrong with Köfte.) and an addi­tional parade for the children.

(By the way, I changed my opin­ion again: our Karneval der Kul­turen is some­what more impress­ive than the Not­ting Hill Car­ni­val, even though it’s not as large and our taste in music still a bit ves­ti­gial. Nev­er­mind though, I love both options. Are we going back to Lon­don this year?)

In the last years we’ve been avid vis­it­ors of the Sunday Car­ni­val parade, but we were either enjoy­ing the fest­iv­it­ies too much to actu­ally take pic­tures or we were simply lazy and didn’t want to carry our cam­eras around. This year our crew, although often sep­ar­ated within the masses and lit­er­ally drown­ing in drama, was attached to their lenses and we are very proud to share our impres­sions with you. Col­or­ful cos­tumes, beau­ti­ful people, cheer­ing and laugh­ing faces, the blue sky and the bright sun, the mind blast­ing music and per­form­ances as well as the raves full of young people are the sum­mary of what you can find in Berlin.

(I can’t get around giv­ing the Horst Kreuzberg back­yard party an extra-mention this year as they’ve saved my night after all! Big boom to OBJEKT!)