Karneval starts on November 11th at 11:11am with a crazy opening ceremony. Everyone puts on their costumes and heads to the main town square where the start of the “fifth season” begins. After that, there are little celebrations on specific days throughout the next couple of months until the “crazy days” in February that end with parties in the streets, bars and clubs.

The “crazy days” go on for about 5 days starting with Weiberfastnacht or Women’s Day. It’s a fun tradition where the women dress up in costumes to go to work. Throughout the day, when a women sees a man wearing a tie they cut the tie off with a pair of scissors and the man walks around with half a tie all day. Then later on in the evening everyone goes out a bar/club to party. By then everyone (and I mean everyone) is dressed up in some kind of costume. Friday is more relaxed because everyone is recovering from Thursday but there are still parties going on. Saturday and Sunday is filled with smaller parades, parties and lots of Kölsch drinking.

Rosenmontag is the big day! Over 1 million people show up in costume to watch this amazing spectacle. It’s about a 4 mile long parade with about 75 decorated floats with bands and dancers and people yelling Kölle Alaaf. This goes on for hours! Most of the floats throw out tons of kamelle (little sweets), strüßjer (flowers), little toys, or if you’re really lucky, boxes of chocolate.

This was our first year getting to experience Karneval. Our group of friends decided the costume theme for this year was movie characters. Alex and I went as Danny and Sandy from Grease. We got to show off our costumes on Thursday night when we went out with a bunch of friends to a bar. We sang and danced the night away (although, someone did ask me if I was Mozart…costume for next year?). Then we busted out our costumes again for a parade at a friends house on Saturday. We got to watch the parade on a much smaller scale and everyone (yes, even the adults) had bags full of candy once it was over. Then one final day being Danny and Sandy (we really got our money’s worth!) for the HUGE parade. We stood outside for hours watching amazing float after float go by while catching tons of candy being thrown at us. It was a very cool experience. Can’t wait to do it again next year! Kölle Alaaf!

Danny & Sandy

The Oompa Loompa was my favorite costume

He got his tie cut at work

Saturday parade group

Stores board up their windows so they don’t get broken during Karneval

Rosenmontag!

Rosenmontag!

Rosenmontag!