November 11th



Germany has very strong Carnival traditions. Specially in the western Catholic federal states. Every November 11th, people go crazy in some parts of the country. The date is crazy itself: 11.11. and the opening of the Carnival takes place at 11.11 a.m. The Carnival lasts till Lent. Traditionally, Carnival is vivid on streets only on November 11th from its start till Christmas. Vivid means that people wear strange costumes and they are drunk at noon already.  The city which stands for Carnival in Germany is Cologne. 

Children love Carnival



From November 11th, the Carnival unions celebrate for most of the time within their union houses. Everything changes abruptly as soon as the final week of Carnival arrives. Starting from Thursday before Ash Wednesday people go out on the streets. In Rhineland nobody works. As a citizen of Protestant federal state like Schleswig-Holstein, you stick in your paper work in your office in the middle of the week and then suddenly your friends, normally very career oriented people, from Rhineland call you at noon, sounding like they have had a few and you hear unbelievably loud party sounds in the background. And then they tell you they look like Diana Ross and their friends are a knight, a witch, a pirate and a mermaid.

   

A Carnavalist in Maastricht



However, I have a German friend who does not like Carnival. As soon as he sees a chance he blows the town for the Carnival week. One year he fled to me, visiting me in Maastricht, when I was studying in the Netherlands. Priceless, the look on his face, when he got off his car with a crate of his favorite beer in the middle of the Maastricht's Carnival...Despite of what most people think about the Netherlands, the country has an amazing Carnival culture too, being excercised as enthousiastically as the practices in Cologne, Düsseldorf or Mainz.

Jobs change, times change. Now accidentaly my old friend and me both live in the same city, a very protestant Hanover. However, my old Buddy, I have some bad news for you. Look what I saw yesterday at our city hall at 11.15 a.m...

In confessionally mixed and in Protestant and therefore historically not attached to Carnival federal states in Germany, Carnival unions were only founded in the last decades of the 20th century. Parades and carnavalists started to rule the streets even in very unrockable places. But still there is a definitely big quality difference between the traditional Carnival cities and the rest of Germany.

Happy Carnival to all of you out there!

These must be the Carnival Prince and Princess of Hanover.

Traffic on one of the main streets of Hanover has been stopped yesterday for the procession of the Carnival marching bands.

Hanover seems to be a respectable location when it comes to Carnival in Lower Saxony. The scope of madness here is probably not impressive  though when compared to Cologne or Maastricht. I will have an eye on these folks.