The German Way To Celebrate Carnival
I can’t stand it anymore
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Due to the Coronavirus, the carnival in Rio de Janeiro had to be canceled this year. The german carnival was canceled as well because of the virus which made the whole of Germany really sad. Carnival in Germany is quite a big deal for most people living here, especially for people living in a rural region. Lots of marches, parties, and festivals had to pass this year and wait till the next year. Let me explain how a carnival in Germany looks like and why it’s not for everyone a pleasant time.
The carnival in Germany here called “Fasching” or “Fasnet” (there are quite some names for it, these are only two) is the main feast in February for the people here. Everyone gets a costume of his or her choice and goes to either a march or a party. The marches are one of the main attractions which take place nearly everywhere and have a different structure if you compare them to the carnival in Rio. Here in Germany, there are a lot of carnival associations, the so-called “Narrenzünfte”, that have different themes, costumes, and most importantly, unique masks. Every march consists out of multiple participating associations that always walk in groups accompanied by some music. There is an incredibly high number of different associations, for example, the ones are witches, others are bears, there are fishes and even fruits. The masks are definitely the most important aspect of every association and are designed with a lot of effort and are just really beautiful to look at. The people that walk in these marches and are representing their association in their specific costume are called “Narren”. If you would translate this to English it would be “fools”, which is a quite good description of these. The “Narren” are entertaining the viewers which stand at the side of the streets by playing tricks on them, for example, they take some people with them and “kidnap” some persons, or just litter a huge amount of hay on them. For the kids, they’re throwing candy through the air or give some kids a handful of them.
Apart from the marches, there are tons of parties in nearly every town and village. You can imagine them as huge costume parties where everyone has a costume and drinks lots of alcohol. For young people, this is the more interesting part of this whole feast. For a whole week, there are parties every evening you can participate in and have a good time with friends and strangers. These parties can go quite a while till dawn with loud party music and a crowded area but still, thousands of people normally participate, except this year, thanks, Corona.
Even if this might sound fun, it definitely isn’t fun for everyone. To be honest, I really don’t like the carnival here. The whole week, even more than that, nearly the whole of February you can hear loud march music coming from somewhere near your home and it’s the same song that repeats every single year, again and again. After so many years of hearing this music, I completely dislike this song and I just don’t want to hear it anymore. In addition to this, the parties are often crowded with drunk people and… well, I guess you can imagine what’s happening there. Drunk people are just really annoying when you just want to have some peace, they break stuff in the towns and ruin the gardens and houses of people living near the party spots and this whole vandalism is just very mean to the innocent people.
So in the end, it’s up to you whether you like carnival from Germany or not. If you’re a person that wants to party a lot, hey, this is exactly what you’re looking for. If you don’t like crowded places, loud music, and lots of people in costumes that could play pranks on you, better you stay away from here like I do. I don’t want to say that carnival in Germany is terrible but it has indeed some negative points you should keep in mind.
