- Title: GERMANY: GERMANS CELEBRATE THE TRADITIONAL CARNIVAL SEASON
- Date: 21st February 2004
- Summary: WIDE TOP SHOT OF CROWDS OF COSTUMED FOOLS PARADING THROUGH CROWDS OF SPECTATORS VARIOUS OF FOOLS DANCING AND BANGING THEIR BALLOONS ON STICKS ON THE FLOOR CLOSE UP OF BALLOON ON A STICK /PAN UP TO PEOPLE IN COSTUME CLOSE UP OF COSTUME MADE FROM CORN-ON-THE-COB HUSKS WIDE OF SPECTATORS VARIOUS OF PEOPLE IN COSTUMES MADE FROM LOTS OF SHELLS VARIOUS OF MAN IN A COSTUME MADE FROM PLAYING CARDS CLOSE UP OF LITTLE BOY IN A COSTUME MADE FROM RIBBONS
- Embargoed: 7th March 2004 12:00
- Keywords:
- Location: WALDKIRCH, ZELL & BERLIN, GERMANY
- City:
- Country: Germany
- Topics: Entertainment,Quirky,Light / Amusing / Unusual / Quirky
- Reuters ID: LVA3RCDIW316BDXJ2NR0DQ18IE48
- Aspect Ratio:
- Story Text: While fools take to the streets by day, witches
traditionally celebrate carnival at night in Germany.
New members were initiated into the witches covent
in the black forest town of Waldkirch on Saturday night
(February 22), as they are around this time every year.
The whole convent watches the spectacle, ruled by the
devil who oversees the transformation of the hitherto
untainted young men into fully fledged witches. Only men who
were born in the area and who are above the age of eighteen
can be brought into the covent. The Kandel witches
originate from 1974, before that the covent was a more
traditional carnival group dating from 1856.
Traditionally people dressed up as fools parade through
the streets in an effort to ban winter, such as in the
southern German town of Zell, where the Narro, as they are
called, are waken from their winter sleep to climb out of the
cellar and chase the winter away by banging inflated pigs stomachs
on sticks on the floor, although today they use air balloons.
In the capital too they succeeded in banIshing the cold
and damp, to a certain extent, and so could use their
umbrellas for better things - like turning them upside down
so to catch the sweets and chocolates which are thrown from the
decorated floats.
Berlin is not actually a traditional carnival town, but
a day before its rival in Cologne, it reached record
numbers for visitors. More than 750,000 spectators cheered
the 60 decorated floats and 3,000 fools through the streets of
the German capital. - Copyright Holder: REUTERS
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