Germany is gearing up for Carnival

Okay, so Germany isn’t exactly the first place you’d associate with Mardi Gras, right? The first time we heard about what the Germans call “Karneval” or “Fasching”, we thought to ourselves: no beach? No Brazilian ladies? No bright sunshine? No Carnival!

Yet Germany holds one of the world’s greatest Mardi Gras festivals, regardless of the less than appealing weather. The biggest place for Karneval is Cologne, which hosts around 1 million revellers in the run up to Shrove Tuesday, followed by other cities in the surrounding Rhineland such as Düsseldorf and Bonn. Visitors will enjoy lively processions, city-wide parties, and general mayhem for days on end.

Munich is certainly not able to compete with that in terms of numbers, but has does have its own version, “Fasching”, which is pretty wild and colourful nonetheless and a great time to visit the city. The highlights are the balls held in the weeks leading up to Carnival, which moves with Easter and starts this year just before the weekend of 14^th/15^th February (Shrove Tuesday is on 17^th). Although the word “ball” might sound a little la-di-dah, this is Bavaria, so we’re still talking beer rather than champagne and – more often than not – lederhosen and dirndls instead of tuxedos: just look at the ball held by the organisers of the traditional Oide Wiesn, for example, where everyone takes pleasure in pulling on their Oktoberfest costume over six months ahead of schedule!

In fact, some of the “balls” might live up to another meaning of that particular one-syllable multi-connotation noun: there’s Schabernackt, for example, a party held annually in the Löwenbräukeller. The motto is, er, revealing: “Come however you like, but just make sure you’re wearing something.” Emphasis on “something”. Yes, in Cologne, Carnival is known as the time of year in which old flames start roaring again and new fires are kindled – and Munich too is no stranger to sexually charged atmospheres.

Then again, the real point of Fasching is tradition, and so even with all the partying, no Munich resident or visitor should pass up the opportunity to see the market ladies at the sophisticated Viktualienmarkt put on their annual dance. Every Shrove Tuesday, thousands gather to watch them go through their moves – and enjoy a nice beer from one of the stands while doing so. It’s the culmination to a great few weeks of festivities in which Munich shows us all that a cold alpine winter needn’t mean that everyone stays indoors. And just to prove a point, they follow it up with the world-famous Strong Beer Festival a few weeks after Ash Wednesday…