Fasching notebook
To be utterly disabused of the notion that Germans are a dour people, visit in February when the weather is grim and bleak and lacking in good cheer but the Menschen certainly are not. February is when Karneval happens – also called Fasching and Fastnacht in different parts of the country.
It’s a time to walk out the front door and straight down the rabbit hole. Because ambling down the street is a procession of adults and children dressed up as the full spectrum of fruit, vegetables, animals, insects, civil servants and street furniture. There is glitter, sequins and make-up in abundance, wigs and crazy hats. The ground is dotted with confetti.
I spotted a man with the mien and physique of a rugby lock strolling out of the train station in Mainz clad in pink tights, a tutu and a gigantic flamingo protruding from his head. Mainz is one of the cities in Germany with the most lavish Karneval street parade (along with Cologne and Düsseldorf), so his get-up was but one in a sea of head-turning ensembles.
While the parade across the Rhine river in the city of Wiesbaden, as well as in the nearby town of Erbach, were considerably toned-down versions of the Mainz extravaganza, they were certainly not short of a disco ball helmet or two, bulky rompers and many a bare leg – single digit degree celsius weather be damned.
General raucous merriment is the order of the day. This appears to involve vast quantities of drink, jostling to catch the bounty thrown by the performers on the floats – from sweets and tiny bottles of liqueur to pens, bouncy balls and big, doughy pretzels – and possibly a spot of unsolicited canoodling from strangers. It’s traditionally a last hurrah before the abstemious period of Lent begins.
In the Rhine-Main area – which includes Mainz, the capital of the state of Rhineland-Palatinate; Wiesbaden, the capital of the state of Hesse; and Erbach, a town in the surrounding Rheingau wine region – parade participants and spectators wave and shout “Hellau” to each other, again and again and again. When most days as a foreigner sees one sputtering and stumbling through a basic sentence, it’s a singularly exhilarating time to feel Sprachgefühl.