We were able to experience Carnival/Mardi Gras in the German style - Fastnacht or Faschingsfest. Another of my old friends from student days lives in Rottenburg am Neckar, a Catholic town in the middle of a Protestant area. Tubingen, the next town over, is historically Protestant and therefore there are absolutely, positively no carnivals in celebration of the last day before Lent. My history lesson for the weekend was to realize that the Reformation and the battles surrounding it ended up with not just people being Catholic or Protestant, but individual towns and even entire states were qualified that way, maybe even more so than the people themselves. Anyway, we fortuitously timed our visit when there was a "small" parade for Fastnacht. Three hours worth of a small parade!!!!
No skimpy outfits here...somehow the snow on the ground makes for a different style of celebration than New Orleans, although I'm sure that's not the only reason.
These are some of the "Narrs" - jesters or fools. They occasionally stopped in the parade to cart off some hapless onlooker for a few hundred yards, taking away shoelaces or throwing someone into a revolving straw cart.
There were also lots of witches - we were right next to the Black Forest and this seems appropriately like something out of Grimm's Fairy Tales. The masks are carved out of wood and some of them are quite old.
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