Faschnacht Parade in Mainz on Rosenmontag

Fasching is a celebration each year that originated in a way to "scare away" winter. Now it has evolved into a giant party. Everyone dresses up and hits the streets for the many festivities. Mainz has the second largest Fasching parade in Germany and it was a blast. It was freezing cold but we decided we had do our best in scaring away winter.


These guys were more than eager to pose. They also would play tricks with you. One guy had a little contraption that had two boxing gloves on it. He would squeeze two parts of the thing and then the boxing gloves would shoot 10 feet out in the air towards a person. They were hitting people with the boxing gloves. It was crazy.



Weird.

This picture gives one the scope of how many people were here and how crowded this thing was. The parade was 4-5 hours long as it made it's way through Mainz.

We took the train from our village to Mainz with our friends the Thompsons.

This guy was part of a wicked looking marching band.

Not so wicked looking marching band.

Scary clowns.

These witches were kind of spooky and definately helped towards the goal of scaring off winter. If you look closely there is a fire burning in the cauldron behind them in the cart.