Whew... just when I thought I could not possibly handle MORE Fasching, I went on a ten hour Fasching binge today. Monday is THE Fasching day though, so I dragged my butt outa bed and headed over the Mainz (the next town over) with Will and Stephanie -two of Josh's friends and now my friends, too!! :) --to watch the parade. Josh (sadly) had to work and met up with us later. Mainz is actually one of the biggest Fasching celebrating cities in Germany, and I can not POSSIBLY imagine any city doing anything bigger then what Mainz did. The parade was FIVE HOURS LONG. No, I am not not joking FIVE. Like one, two, three, four FIVE HOURS. I swear in America parades last like 40 minutes...I even googled it for comparison and the biggest US parade that I could think (the Macy's Day Parade) lasts 2 to 3 hours. And that's a national, televised parade... this isn't even nationally televised on the same level as the Macy's Day Parade (I don't think). Needless to say, we watched about two hours and moved on, but the parade itself stretches SEVEN MILES. I mean, I never even imagined a parade that big existed anywhere.
There are SO MANY PICTURES in this post. But I really did pick and choose. I think showing any less would not be doing the parade justice (and remember I only saw like 1/3rd of it!!!) so here ya go-
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| Pretty typical kid costume... adorable, right? |
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| These are traditional fasching parade costumes |
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| Some of the floats just did not make any sense to me at all. Like this one, for example. |
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| Apparently (for some unknown reason) dressing up colonial was REALLY, REALLY popular. It seemed like every other group was dressed like this (minus the adorable fake dogs). |
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| Mainz is a big wine making region, so lots of the floats were wine themed |
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| Captain America! This kid was adorable, and later got really sad for some reason |
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| Sad Captain America. |
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| The floats threw out kettle corn instead of (or with) candy! :) | |
Annddd DONE. Seriously... (as I am sure you can tell) it was like the parade that would never end. But it was really cool and I am glad I got the chance to see something so awesome in action! Whew, I officially don't need to go to a parade again for at least three-five years! :)
After the parade we went to a dance club that was pretty fun: there was lots of American music that our group got pretty into including B. Spears, the Backstreet Boys, Spice Girls... & classics like the macarania and YMCA. It was funny that when the YMCA came on and we all did the little YMCA dance, NO GERMANS DID IT! At all. Not one. Apparently Germans never learned that dance?... Someone said it's because their alphabet is different or something, but I don't know... new mission: bring the YMCA to Germany!! :)
Overall, Fasching was a great time and I am so glad that I was able to experience it. It's definitely about one million times better then any Halloween festival I have ever been too... sadly. Maybe I just need to go to better Halloween parties or something, but I kind of doubt anything could top this five day extravaganza!
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