Ich war gestern ganz überrascht schon an Weiberfastnacht eine Parade zu sehen, gerade habe ich nachgelesen das es der Jan und Griet Zug war, die traditionell erste Parade der Karnevalswoche. Den klassischen Rosenmontagszug werde ich mir wahrscheinlich nicht ansehen aber am Sonntag wenn das Wetter mitspielt den Schull- un Veedelszöch, den die Kölner Schulen und Karnevalsvereine aus den verschiedenen Kölner Vierteln organisieren. Ich werde dort sicher wieder photographieren und habe außerdem noch einiges von gestern übrig – bis Aschermittwoch wird es also noch weitere Karnevalsposts geben (─‿‿─)
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Here are as promised the next photos from yesterday. I was surprised to see a parade on Fat Thursday, I just learned that this was the so called “Jan and Griet” Parade that is traditionally the first of the parades in the carnival week. As in Brasil, there are a vast number of carnival clubs in Cologne, each quarter has several ones with different traditions. These clubs organize the parades, they create the costumes for their members and build and decorate the carnival floats. The costumes are often either fantasy uniforms or made of rags. The members of the clubs throw sweets (the so called “Kamelle”) at the surrounding crowd and some of them play music, mostly marches. The most famous of these parades is the one that takes place on Rose Monday but I will probably skip this one and visit the parade on sunday instead, that is organized by the schools of Cologne and the carnival clubs of several quarter in Cologne. I will probably take more photos then and also still have a lot from yesterday, so there are more posts to come until ash wednesday (─‿‿─)
That’s well put. Merci bien!
This may be Cologne’s Soul: Costumed freaks in front of tiled houses. Beautiful pictures.
Great photos! The club of ‘warriors’ (Germanii?) is just amazing—especially those topknots..
Thank you! They dressed up as Mongolian warriors if I remember this correctly. This is another strange thing about Cologne, there are over 80 clubs that call themselves tribes and that try to imitate the life and costumes of other cultures, for example that of Vikings or Huns. Some groups even do religious rituals, so it’s not just about costumes. They are loosely connected to carnival culture but they have meetings and events all over the year. Some of them were part of this parade yesterday. Very extraordinary :-)