I was lucky to live in an area that takes Karneval very seriously. Before the week started I had talked to friends whom are living in East Germany and France and they had never heard of this holiday. What a shame for them!
They had the traditional Wednesday night bell walking through the town to start off the festivities.
A massive group of people all wearing bells steals the Karneval key from the Rathaus and parades it around the streets of the town to signify the start of Fasching!
The Thursday marks the first of many parades through the city and it is the first real night of partying!
The traditional purpose of Fasching is to scare away winter, welcoming spring and prepare for the fasting that occurs during the Lenten season. But truthfully I think the Germans use it as a free week of partying!!
Each morning throughout Karneval we were awakened in the am by either a small parade or a band marching the street or the bell walkers dancing up and down the road. It was loud and I definitely had a hard time sleeping that week but well worth being awake to be able to experience something so cool!
As for the partying we did a little of that too! We had no matches this weekend but we did have practice early Friday, Saturday and late Sunday. Jana and I started the week of by participating in ladies night, thursday, with a few of the girls from my team. We had all the ladies over for some drinking and then prepared to take to the street. Within 20 minutes we had lost them and were alone for the rest of the evening. In Villingen we don't have any clubs but every restaurant and bar was converted into a mini night club and you could barely move more than 5 feet once you got inside anywhere. So we bar hopped so that we didn't have to deal with the crowds. We also got to dress up as it is like Halloween here......Jana was the Queen of Darkness and I was the Devil! Which after I thought about it wasn't the best choice for a catholic holiday but oh well!
The street the first night!
Jana and I in our finished costumes
We took Friday night off and had a ladies night in as we had 10 am practice for 3 hours. We took in one of the parades on the street and enjoyed all the music and lively festivities around the city during the afternoon.
Saturday night was the biggest party night for us. We had the pre-party at our place again with some of the hockey players and their wives as well as the girls from our team. There was about 20 + people drinking and partying in our little flat! This night also marked a new costume for the festivities. There was everything from 80s workout girls to Spanish ladies to Lady Bugs, German Beer Girl, Punk Rockers, Clowns and Hot Bayrish men or was it a women? I can't quite remember! The street was crazy that night as every bar/restaurant was bumping and we spent most of the night losing each other, trying to stop from getting into a fight with a girl who was burning a friend of mine with her cigarette, wandering around aimlessly trying to find everyone, watching a friend try to punch his way out of the back of the bar, dance parties back at home, sphagetti throwing contests at our ceiling and 4am Doner Kehbab! All in all it was a great night and I think that everyone had fun, at least they seemed like they were!
Roomies in our finished costumes night 2!
Night 3: Third costume of the week
Although it wasn't the latest night for us we did have a lot of fun and finished the week off of partying off right.
Tuesday, aka Shrove Tuesday, and the final day of festivities had the longest parade of the week. This three hour parade was like Halloween....the people in the parade toss out candy, pretzels and best of all booze into the crowd!! There was a variety of floats, costumes and phrases you needed to say in order to get them to throw candy towards you. Good thing we had a German girl with us to tell us what to say or else we wouldn't have gathered our backpack full of goodies!
Some pictures from the parade!
Tuesday night finished with the returning of the key to the city and thus ending the festivities and starting the Lenten season. After the key was returned the people that were gathered started swaying and singing the town song as a huge bonfire was lit to signify the end of week and the start of the fasting season.
They best shot I could get of the enormous key!
They best shot I could get of the enormous key!
All in all a crazy week and a nice break before our last 5 matches of the season!
No comments:
Post a Comment