Today the kids and I walked down into Ramstein village to watch the "Fasching Parade". Fasching (pronounced foshing) is the Germany version of "Carnival" or "Fat Tuesday". The people in the villages wear crazy costumes and they tend to drink A LOT. For some reason men REALLY like dressing up like women......take from that what you will:) Residents along the parade route are encouraged to decorate their homes to support the celebration. The parade participants as well as the crowd shout back and forth to each other "Helau" (sounding like "hallo!") or "Alaaf" (which sounds like "a-yup!") They also chant and dance and throw LOTS of candy and bags of popcorn (I'm not sure what significance the popcorn has). We had fun watching the parade, catching treats and shouting "Helau!"
Tasha just after we arrived at the parade.
This man has had a bit too much to drink.....his bow tie has somehow ended up on his hat!
Like I stated before, men like to dress as women at this event like this french maid dragging a piece of luggage.
Jordan and Tasha were luck to get a really good spot to watch the parade. They literally could reach out and touch the parade participants.
I don't know what the heck these two are doing. There were 2 ladies right before them that unfortunately I didn't get a picture of. The woman was dressed as a witch. She swept by and screamed right at me. Well, I showed her......I screamed back and away she ran, so I was only able to take a picture of these 2 goofs!
These are the standard costumes (for some reason) for the parade. I saw many others on the TV dressed this way. They usually paint their faces like a clown too.
This person in the mask and rags is a pretty standard costume too. Sometimes the person in this costume has a stick with big pretzels on it (not sure what that's about either).
Aaahhh! The ever popular umpa-umpa band!
I only wish I had a needle!
This guy was running to catch up with the rest of his bagpipe buddies. By the way, he was wearing short pants under his kilt! 
They've even got the baby in on it:) He's a little vampire!
It's the queen of hearts and her court! They were throwing bags of crackers and............
..........they threw one right to Tasha!
Love those drums!
This was the final group. We followed them through the village until I could figure which direction led back to our house.
1 comment:
I'm sure glad the bag-piper was wearing somethin' under his skirt! Phew!
We don't have cool parades like that in our little town. Bummer!
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