Fasnacht is the carnival season before Lent. Throughout February there are parades with folks sporting fantastic wooden masks. What I found most interesting is that the parade people don't just participate in the festivities in their own towns, but travel all over the region on the weekends to march in other towns' parades. It means that anytime you go somewhere by train during Fasnacht, you run into scores of these masked monsters uncannily out of context. Buehl boasted 130 groups marching. We watched rapt for three hours and left before it was over.
This pair was quite brave. People standing close to the edge of the parade in Buehl are routinely "kidnapped," that is, carried off by parade characters, put in a spinning barrel and covered with confetti. When they are let out, they have to walk back to where their family and friends are. This usually means walking back through the parade, making them highly vulnerable to getting snapped up again, but this time by a different group. The "snow" on the ground is the confetti that is specially cut with serrated edges to stick to your clothes. We were tramping it around the house for weeks.
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