Fasching

Today is the last day of Fasching, German Carnival. The celebration is a bit different in each city and some places do call it Karnival, but all in all, it is one big celebration. The craziness starts on the Thursday before Ash Wednesday in a ritual where men wear ties and women will go around and cut them off of the man that they ´choose´I´m not really sure where this part of the tradition comes from, and I haven´t seen it happen so I can´t really give you more details... the weekend is filled with parties and various comedical speaches, and everyone gets dressed up. Some people are in all out costumes as we are on halloween, but others are just in silly hats and suits. I watched some of these speaches on T.V. but obviously didn´t understand what was going on due to my lack of German. Anyhow, some towns hold parades over the weekend, and I went to one with Sabine. In the north these are just good old fashioned parades, but down in the south there is more of a pagan tradition to the Fasching celebration. It started when original settlers of Germany would hold festivities this time of year to scare winter away... The people would dress as witches, and wear bells and walk around trying to shout and scare out the winter and bring spring. When Christianity came into play, the thought is that they tried to adapt their holidays in congruence with the exisiting pagan ones, which is why there is an over lap meanings of the celebration. Here are some picts of the parade I went to:

Another aspect to the parades is that they will pull people (most of the time teenage girls) out of the crowd and harass them in a number of ways... paint their faces, wrap their legs in tape, pick 'em up and carry them over the shoulder for a ways in the parade, throw them in a barrel of hay. But the thing is they love it, it is a tradition that all German kids grow up with and love, so it only seems natural that you would still enjoy it as an adult. So here are some girls that showed up looking normal, and half way throught the parade look like this: Fasching continues on Rose Monday and Fasching Tuesday in another slew of bigger parades (in Köln and Mainz) and parties all leading up to Ash Wednesday when the celebration ends and lent begins... you´d better get all the bad stuff out of your system now :-)

--- on Saturday of last weekend I drove to a city that was an hour away, just to walk around and have a look. There wasn´t a whole lot there, but it was a very cute picture-esq German town. That night I had a girls´ night out with my friends who I will be spending a whole weekend with in Barcelona in April for a Hen Party weekend. Here´s a couple more picts: