Carnival

This is going back a couple months, but that's what happens when one doesn't blog very often.

For those that don't know what Carnival is, in summary, it begins the weekend preceding Lent, and ends Ash Wednesday. It is the days that people are allowed to do "whatever they want" before the period of fasting. Though it is well known in other parts of the world (Brazil and New Orleans are probably the best known to most that are reading this), in Germany, the biggest celebrations are found in the south (Bavaria), and in Cologne and Dusseldorf. All that means is, in these days, these cities have the honor of behaving as a modern day Sodom and Gomorrah. The celebration is held in the Altstadt (old city), where the "Mayor" of Carnival gives the celebrants the key to the city for those days, to 'do as they will'.

That is Carnival for adults. For kids it just means they get to dress up at school, and have fun for one day before getting a four day weekend (adults dress up as well, and yes, it is a postal holiday).

Our kids tend to dress in animal costumes, this year being the year of the dog. We searched high and low for the best dog costumes, and found out one very important fact, costumes are way more expensive here. We finally found the perfect one, on sale!!

The day came and Karis and Kaleb were ready for fun! They dressed up, we painted their faces and away they went. What was fun for us and Zeeky was the Krack Zug (noise parade). Karis' entire school went through our neighborhood in their costumes, just making noise (no one is allowed to scold them). We took Zeeky out to watch, dressed up in Kaleb's old frog costume.

The rest of the weekend remained pretty quiet as the celebrating is in the city center.