Fastelavn!

Recently, a few of my housemates and I got to celebrate a super fun Danish tradition called Fastelavn- it's basically the Danish version of Halloween, and everyone wears costumes, enjoys Fastelavnsbøller (Fastelavn buns), et cetera.  The kollegium two buildings down graciously invited us to celebrate with them on Saturday evening, so immediately upon arriving back home from short study tour, Anna, Rita, Meaghan, Stephanie, Sarah, and I set to work putting together costumes out of our incredibly limited resources.  This is the final product of our efforts:

Sarah as Hello Kitty, Stephanie as "Winter," me as a robber (I would), Rita as a cat, Anna as a masked salsa dancer, and Meaghan as a mouse!

We set off down the street en route to the party, knocked on the door, and were greeted by two confused, costumed guys.  Apparently, the kollegium was still finishing up with their celebratory dinner and not quite ready for the party (obviously US) to arrive yet.  After awkwardly standing around for a few minutes, we were finally escorted upstairs into the kollegium's library, where there was a bar set up and music playing.  Minutes later, we were once again ushered out onto the main staircase to observe the breaking of a large wooden barrel decorated with a painting of a black cat- think piñata, but potentially more dangerous.  The cat-barrel-piñata is based on the old tradition of actually putting a live black cat inside of a barrel and then striking the barrel repeatedly until it broke, sending the cat (or the messenger of Satan) running away into the night.  During the age of the Enlightenment, the Danes realized that this practice might be a little cruel and instead switched to candy.  By the way, the person to successfully split the barrel open with a baseball bat was a guy dressed as a nun.  That nun had quite the arm.

Note the costumes and the mad-dash for candy.

Considering none of us (besides Anna and another Danish friend Nicoline) knew what to expect, it was a pretty entertaining experience.  We were originally told that the kollegium was home to only guys who were studying to be priests, but this turned out to be untrue- we found some law students too.  Most people were grad students though, so we all felt a bit young/inadequate; oh well.  Also interesting was the system of purchasing a klipkort (clip ticket usually used on trains) to buy drinks.  And above all, the fact that this whole party took place in the library with people dancing around and everything.  If you're Anna, you even took the opportunity to do some light reading:

Overall, I'd say my first Fastelavn was an experience to remember- being the only Americans there, it was fun to try to blend in with the Danish students (at least until I opened my mouth).  At the end of the night, they even handed out pastries!!  That in and of itself is enough to make for a successful party.....