More Fasching Festivities...

Hey all! I hope that you had a wonderful weekend! We had a great weekend... Between celebrating Fasching, having dinner with friends, planning our spring/summer getaways (more about that in a later post), and rock climbing, we managed to keep ourselves very busy! :)

On Saturday we headed over to Fischbach (a neighboring town) to participate in their Fasching festivities. It was such a fun time! The one thing I love about Fasching is that it is such a bright and colorful celebration! Literally, all of the costumes and decorations consist of bright red, blue, orange, green, yellow, and purple... Everything and everyone is just so festive! It really brightens up those dull, dreary, gray days of winter! Plus, being around so many Germans who are so happy and excited about the festival makes it quite easy to get caught up in all of the excitement too! :)

The parade on Saturday was quite fun. It still amazes me that they can get away with some of the things they do during the parade! I mean, they pick little kids up and run away with them, they take hats off of innocent bystanders and either throw them into the crowd or walk away with them, they come up to people and put handfuls of confetti/straw in your hair and rub it around OR they'll put it down the back of your shirt... It's craziness! The thing that caught my attention during this parade, was not the fact that the people were throwing candy, or bags of popcorn, or even tulips (yep, I had a tulip thrown at me! :)), but the fact that they were tossing out donuts (unwrapped donuts at that)! :) Yes, you read that correctly, they went to the bakery, purchased alot of donuts, and then threw them out to the people watching the parade! That would so not go over well in the U.S.! But, here, it seemed perfectly normal... Definitely a whole different culture! :) I have to admit though, that even with all of the crazy antics that take place during the parade, the parades are actually alot of fun! My favorite part is the fact that each group carries a sign that has their name and special chant on it... As they walk by, they shout the first word in the chant and the crowd has to say the second word... And, you don't want to be the unfortunate bystander that does not know what the second part of their chant is! The people in the parade will sometimes approach you and yell the first half of the chant and you have to reply with the second half. And, if you don't know it, you will most likely end up being pulled out to walk in a portion of the parade, or you will end up with confetti or straw in your hair or down your back! :) Needless to say, as soon as we saw a new group of people coming up in the parade, we quickly memorized the second part of their chant! :) At times, I would just randomly shout it out, in the hopes that they wouldn't come over to me! :)

Apparently, next weekend marks the end of this festival. I guess everyone goes all out on this weekend and it's supposed to be absolutely crazy around the area! :) There are two parades next Saturday, and we're planning on going to both... Friedrichshafen has one in the afternoon, and the city of Uberlingen has one in the evening. We've been invited to watch the parade in Friedrichshafen with a group of friends from our language school, and then we were invited to watch the parade in Uberlingen and partake in some of their festivities with a different group of friends... Brian and I are very much looking forward to it! :)

If you're interested in learning more about Fasching and it's history, click here for some additional information. Also, here's a few of the pictures we captured from this weekend's parade... Enjoy!

Friedrichshafen, because it's a larger city, has a few different Fasching groups, each of which has a different costume style... One of the groups dress up as chickens! :) I love it!

The funniest part of this costume is that when I first returned to Germany in January, I was driving down the road, and I had to stop at a crosswalk to let one of these "chickens" cross the road! :) I had no idea, at the time, why someone would be dressed up as a chicken and crossing the road and I remember being so mad because I didn't have a camera at the time... I mean, how perfect of a picture would that have been?? :) It would have helped to answer that age old question... Why did the chicken cross the road??... I know, I'm a dork! :)

Look at all of the detail in this mask... Pretty amazing!

The hexen (witches) would suddenly start sprinting down the parade route!

Here's an example of one of the group signs... At the bottom of the sign are the words "Sowieso - Allweilno"... As their group walked by, they would shout "Sowieso", and the crowd would respond with "Allweilno"...

I couldn't figure out if he looked kind or creepy! :)

These costumes reminded me of vampires in a way... Very creepy!

Here's where we got bombarded by confetti! This group was pushing this wagon full of confetti and as they walked by, they would grab huge handfuls of it and throw it into the air all over the bystanders... Lovely!

Here it comes...

I swear we spent the rest of the day picking confetti out of our hair and clothes... Ugh! I honestly think that they must save all of the paper from their paper punches throughout the year, just to get such an overabundance of confetti! :)

This hexen (witch) was having fun with Brian and his camera! :)

As did this hexen... :)

Here's the float where they were tossing donuts into the crowd... If you look closely, you can see the one guy getting ready to toss the donut to the child standing by us. :)

These hexen looked like they could be the streetcleaners, with their brooms and all... :)

After the parade... Notice the confetti on my collar? :) It was like fighting a losing battle... No matter how much I brushed off of myself, it would be replaced with new confetti within minutes... Grrr! :) We're still finding it around the apartment! :)

Katrina and Benjamin after the parade... The four of us were participating in the "After Parade Festivities"... :)