Fashing blues -Uncle Nick

Dan at Fasching - life on a business trip
Dan was the pioneer of the Fasching Economics Conference. He made a business trip to Munich that inadvertently turned into full scale participation in the pre-Lenten Carnival, celebrated in the Catholic parts of Germany. On his return to London, a tired, bewildered but exhilarated Dan regaled us all with tales of the greatest party that he could half remember, and had us all sold on the necessity of intensifying our understanding of the German Economy, at the earliest opportunity.
Fasching is all about Costume, Fantasy and the Surreal. 100,000 people in fancy dress change the feel of the most austere city, and Munich is fun anyway, and at any time. Bus Drivers and Policemen can be seen wearing gorilla suits and makeup respectively. Even some dogs get a makeover to resemble a tiger or some other species….well….. if you have that sort of eye. The combination of sleep deprivation, (sleep is “streng verboten” for much of the festival), and the local beer, consumed over a five day period, ensure that you have acquired “that sort of eye”. By the finale of approaching Ash Wednesday, and the immediacy of the start of Lent, everyone is hearing in tongues and has adapted to the normality of the surreal.
Dan went through a variety of costume themes centred round space. He started as a fairly standard spaceman, before slowly mutating into a semi-alien being. Doing duty at the “Death of the Crow” was a relatively early incarnation. The key to this transformation was the steadily increasing application of blue body paint (which I suspect Dan was resorting to, in order to ward off the sub-zero temperatures of the Munich night).
Exhausted after a full night of partying, and having had his “Fruhstuck obligataer” (mandatory breakfast), Dan announced that since sleep was forbidden, he was going to have a massage, before attending an economic meeting with us all at a German Bank.
Being so exhausted, Dan could not get it together to bathe before the masseuse arrived. Consequently the masseuse, a terrifyingly ugly Bavarian woman, (a clone of Rosa Kleb), had the difficult task of massaging a prostrate Dan, thickly covered in woad. Inevitably, white starched uniforms started to get contaminated, and the temper of the Rosa Kleb became ever more frayed as Dan “inadvertently” stretched or moved so as to aggravate the mess and spread the blue paint.
Dan very proudly invited me to inspect his room, prior to setting off to “work”, and reduced me to tears of laughter at the extent of the area, towels and bedding he had been able to contaminate with the body paint.
“Business trips” with Dan were always fun. In general even more fun was had as “mature adults” than we had at our Colleges in our early twenties. I always give thanks for the working life I have been able to lead, and to those dear friends, Dan leading the pack, who helped turn the chore of earning a living into the opportunity to live and laugh to the max.