walki-talki.com Travel Blog

That time of the year is drawing near. Yes, Carnival season. There are many choice places to enjoy it in Europe: Cologne, Duesseldorf, Aachen, Maastricht, Basel, and Venice, to name but a few. Wherever you go, you are assured to have a great time.  

By far the best and biggest celebrations are to be found in Cologne (Koeln), Germany, and in Venice, Italy. The Karneval in Koeln is quite an experience. I had the pleasure of attending this event in 2006. It consists of of an entire week of celebrations that culminates in a gargantuan parade on Rose Monday (Rosenmontag). During this parade, you will see over a million costumed Germans drinking, eating sausages and scrambling to catch carmele (candy) being thrown from the various trains in the endless parade. Upon catching a carmele, a man may present it to a women and demand a bütze (kiss in the Cologne dialect) in return.

The entire affair is totally friendly, the trains in the parade are invariably hilarious and edgy (and not for the prurient, see image), the beer (Kölsch, a pilsner) is good, the sausages aretasty, and the entire affair is difficult to forget. Of course, the giant parade on Rosenmontag is almost an afterthought for the informed traveler. It is best to arrive on the Thursday before (see link above) and enjoy the weekend. The entire city (Germany’s gayest city, by the way) is dressed in costumes and drunk for the entire four days. Every bar one enters will be full of costumed people singing traditional German music and dancing to disco. There will be Brazilian drum sections traveling the streets, and classical troupes spreading mirth everywhere in the city. So, arrive early, party early, and leave in one piece. 

The Carnevale in Venice is a decidedly more elegant affair, though equally hectic. The Venice Carnevale is a festival of masks. Elegantly dressed people will parade the city in the most beautiful and elaborate masks that one can imagine. The masks themselves have evolved into remarkable works of art and one of the many crafts for which the city is renowned. You can learn more about the Carnevale from the walki-talki.com mp3 walking tour of Venice. This tour will also get you acquainted with the major attractions should you find time before or after the party. As with Cologne, you are advised to arrive early to enjoy the festivities before the final parade. 

This year (2008) Karneval, Fasching, Mardis Gras, Carnevale (whatever you want to call it) happens on Monday, February 4.  

Payam

This entry was posted on Sunday, January 20th, 2008 at 1:45 pm and is filed under Destinations, Events, Payam's Corner, Travel Tips, Venice . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.