Witch Sabbath

The guy across the aisle from me last night on the train was wearing a bear costume. It was brown, and fuzzy all over; he was eating a pretzel, and his friend next to him was just wearing normal army-corps uniform. 'Twould have felt surreal, except that the train was packed full, and half the other people on it were dressed as eighteenth-century sailors or fleecy goggly-eyed pink things. It was Hexensabbat ("Witch-Sabbath"), and we were heading into the Black Forest to celebrate.

"Carnival"'s got quite a precise meaning in Germany: it's the few weeks and days just before Lent starts when people do silly things in an organised fashion to let off steam before the forty days of boredom. It's highly regional; round here it's called "Fasnacht" and I'm told the highlight in Freiburg is a parade tomorrow which I'll be making certain to attend. Twenty minutes away by train, in 20,000-inhabitant Waldkirch, where I was yesterday, people spend the nicht of February 2 costumed and drinking and burning a straw witch in the town square. German Wikipedia claims it's the local version of a Celtic festival called Imbolc. (The American version is Groundhog Day.)

At any rate, it sure beat Halloween. Well, New Zealand Halloween, at least. It was nice to see a crowd-together-and-make-merry festival that attracted equal parts families, elderly couples and packs of drunk students.

I missed the witch-burning, but the place was still crowded by the time I got there. I felt a little left out costumeless, though I've no idea where they all came from (does every German have a Carnival costume somewhere in his wardrobe for annual use?) It seemed to be a matter of pride to be part of as big a group as possible of people all costumed identically -- a group of friends would all be dressed as bumblebees, or New York policemen, or the aforementioned fleecy goggle-eyed pink things (the girls in that group also had yellow miniskirts with bright blue flowers). Default costume (that adopted by the middle-aged men) was devil ears and a pitchfork.

Admittedly, lots of that pulsing carnival atmosphere was thanks to German power-pop boomboxed all through the square. Every booze-selling stall, of course, had a vested interest in making people feel as festive as possible while in its immediate vicinity, and so each one was blasting its own noise; sometimes in between two stalls I'd get the weird wavy effect of hearing both. Sample track: this song, known as "Reiß die Hütte Ab" ("Smash Down the Cabin"), which I've since discovered has a cult following of German teenagers who post montages of collapsing structures (Galloping Gertie, the World Trade Centre) to the internet with it as soundtrack.

I came home and learned about Weyl groups for a while before going to bed. I've been speed-learning Lie theory for a little while, and though it's very beautiful I'm frustrated by the need to go faster and faster. This is the course I decided to take out of optimism, despite being woefully underprepared; the unwritten soundtrack of this blog of exciting European adventures has been Lie theory steadily and mercilessly leaving me behind. (That, and me mixing my metaphors, of course.) To catch up, I've read fifty pages of the stuff in the last week. Progress sounds great, until you realise that I've another eighty, plus other material, to cover before the exam ("Klausur") Friday after this.

Wish me luck! And, sometime when I get home, ask me to tell you about maximal tori. You'll like them.