Kölle Alaaf! (traditional carnival greeting although it sure sounds funny to me). To celebrate German winter carnival I headed to the epicentre of it all in Cologne. Karneval is kind of like Halloween in February except with more beer and lots of singing of traditional folk songs to oompa-pa music. The fête starts on Thursday and goes all the way until Monday evening, including a huge 4-hour long parade similar to the Calgary Stampede parade except that many of the floats have political messages (depicting everything from the French election candidates as chickens pecking at each other, to climate change, to likenesses of prominent politicians with nooses around their necks) and the participants in the parade shower you with candy and flowers. And I mean kilograms of the stuff and not just little Halloween chocolates. I caught two full BOXES of chocolates and the guy next to me got clocked in the head with a blutwurst sausage. In North America that would mean lawsuits for sure, but everyone here takes it pretty good-naturedly.
Children watching the parade
One of the cleverst costumes I saw: the Mona Lisa
Proof of the blutwurst:
Celebrating with friends in a pub. I had to improvise a bit for a costume, but I tried to pull off an elf and you can see my attempt at elf-ears with folded band-aids!
