Weekly Photo Challenge: Unique

Black Forest, Germany – The Fasnacht

The festival of Fasnacht is a carnival in Alemannic folklore that takes place in the few days before Lent in Southern Germany, Switzerland and Alsace.  The Alemanni were German tribes who lived in this part of Europe nearly two thousand years ago and this area remains characterised by a form of German with a distinct dialogue called Alemannic.  The celebration literally means ‘Fasting Eve’ as it originally referred to the day before the fasting season of Lent.  The schools are all closed for this festival and all over the Black Forest there are six days of parties and making merry.

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Germany, A Walk in the Black Forest

Germany, Heidelberg

“A ruin must be rightly situated, to be effective. This one could not have been better placed. It stands upon a commanding elevation, it is buried in green woods, there is no level ground about it, but, on the contrary, there are wooded terraces upon terraces, and one looks down through shining leaves into profound chasms and abysses where twilight reigns and the sun cannot intrude.”                                                                                                                                         Mark Twain - ‘A Tramp Abroad’

Heidelberg has an iconic status as a centre of Germanic history and culture. In 1815, at the end of the Napoleonic wars, the Emperors of Austria and Russia and the King of Prussia formed the ‘Holy Alliance’ in Heidelberg and later in 1848, the year of revolutions, a German National Assembly was established here.  During the Nazi era the authorities built a large stadium on the edge of the city where the SS would parade and have massive rallies.  Luckily the city avoided destruction during the war, it is said because the US army rather liked the look of it and fancied setting up shop there but in fact, as Heidelberg was neither an industrial centre nor a transport hub, there was nothing worth bombing and Allied air raids focused on the more important nearby industrial cities of Mannheim and Ludwigshafen.

Although not an industrial centre one thing that Heidelberg is famous for is the manufacture of high quality printing machines used in the newspaper industry.

Next to the car park was the terminus for the city Heidelberger Bergbahn funicular railway which runs up the side of the Königstuhl hillside and stops off at the City’s famous castle on the way, so we bought a combined ride and entry ticket and took the short trip to the castle entrance.  The castle ruins are among the most important Renaissance structures north of the Alps but lays mostly in ruins because it has only been partially rebuilt since its demolition in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In 1537 a lightning-bolt destroyed the upper castle before damage by later wars and fires and in 1764 another lightning-bolt destroyed some rebuilt sections and it was abandoned as being cursed by bad luck.

It was lovely walking around the ruins in the sunshine and under a blue sky the red roofs of the houses spilling down the river made a dramatic vista.  Inside the castle there was a museum of apothecary but with the sun shining we wanted to be outside so we didn’t stay long and when we had seen as much of the ruins as we wanted too we walked back down to the city centre and made for the Marktplatz.

The market place was another of those German picture book town centres with half timbered medieval buildings painted in gay colours surrounding an immaculate cobbled square with a central fountain and statue.  On the northern side and facing the sun there were restaurants and cafés with pavement tables and chairs so we selected one and sat in shirtsleeves in what was by now surprisingly strong sun and we had a coffee and a beer and watched the World go by.

Before we left I paid a visit to the gent’s bathroom and I mention this not to be indelicate or to provide any unnecessary details but just to say that German lavatories must be, after Switzerland, the cleanest in Europe and so spotless that I almost felt that I need to wash my hands on the way in.  Toilets in Greece would come bottom of any list and there wouldn’t be many Loo of the Year awards being handed out in France or Spain either.

After the short break we continued our site seeing by walking to Heidelberg’s famous bridge which sweeps across the River Neckar close to the market place.

The double-armed bridge gate dates from the late middle ages but the first stone bridge, supported by eight posts, was built by Karl Theodor in 1788 which explains its official name ‘Karl-Theodor-Brücke’. The towers served the bridge keeper not only as an apartment, but also as a dungeon for prisoners. In 1945 parts of the bridge were destroyed by the retreating German army as they retreated from the advancing Allied army and both rooms above the gateway were subsequently refurbished as artistic apartments.  We crossed over to the other side and then back again and slipped into the busy main shopping street which runs parallel to the river.

The day was slipping away now and we were mindful of the journey back down the A5 to the Baden Airpark for our late flight home so before we left Heidelberg we needed to find somewhere to eat.  I wanted to return to the restaurant we had used at lunch time but Kim seemed determined to find somewhere else, which at four o’clock in the afternoon was difficult as this is not a popular time for eating anywhere.  She found a likely looking place and we went inside but immediately she didn’t like it so we stopped only for a drink and then she gave in to my plan and we went to my preferred choice.  It was empty of course but the food was excellent and our final meal in Germany was just as successful as all of those in the past four days.

After the meal we returned to the car and left Heidelberg trusting once again to the instructions of the lady in the satnav.  She successfully guided us out of the city and back towards the Autobahn and it was plain sailing all the way from there and she didn’t even try to take on another unnecessary detour through Karlsruhe and with a straightforward run, stopping only to refuel the car, we back at the airport with plenty of time to spare before the late flight back to Stansted.

Germany, Autobahn to Heidelberg

Despite the gloomy weather prediction of the restaurant manager the previous evening we opened the metal shutters on our last day to see some promising patches of blue sky and whilst we had our final breakfast the sun began to shine and it looked as though we might finally get some better weather.

As we packed our bags before checking out and leaving we had to decide on an itinerary that would pick up as many towns and villages as possible for the blue sky pictures that we wanted and we eventually agreed on Gengenbach and Freiburg and once we had paid up and said goodbye we headed out of Offenburg on the familiar route south.  We had only gone a short way and reached the village of Ortenberg however when cloud began to build up and out on the other side we could see thick mists obscuring the top of the forest so we had to make a quick decision before we had travelled too far because if we were going to turn back we needed to do it soon.

In the rear view mirror we could see that it was still sunny behind us so we didn’t take long to decide that that was where we needed to be so we agreed to change our plans and visit the city of Heidelberg about a hundred and fifty kilometres to the north and not soon after the 180º turn we were heading back into the sunshine.

Just outside Offenburg we joined the Autobahn number 5 and headed north.  Although there was fierce competition for road space with BMWs and Mercedes, with considerably more power than I was packing, the little Ford Fiesta exceeded my expectations and did very well indeed and was soon holding its own at a steady one hundred and twenty kilometres an hour and the thing really could go.    Although it was fast and busy the Autobahn felt strangely safe, much more so than our UK motorways, and I put this down to the fact that the lanes seemed wider, it was not so cluttered with barriers and bridges, the entry slip roads are more generous and it felt more spacious and for these reasons the lorries felt somehow less intimidating.

It wasn’t all plain sailing however because there were long stretches of road works for the first eighty kilometres all the way to Karlsrhue which kept slowing things down and then just when the road cleared the satnav lady did something inexplicable and slowed us down even more.  The A5 went all the way to Heidelberg but at Karslrhue she took us off and dragged us on a detour through an industrial estate and then the outskirts of the city.  I had another argument with her and after the unnecessary detour she took us back to the A5 at the next junction after wasting twenty minutes of our time.  I can be accurate about that because almost immediately we overtook an army convoy that we had passed twenty minutes earlier back down the motorway.

I had imagined Heidelberg to be a sleepy little medieval university town so it was disappointing to find that it is really quite large on account of it being part of a densely populated region called the Rhein, Neckar Triangle.  Heidelberg lies on the river Neckar, twenty kilometres below the point where it joins the Rhine at Mannheim and turns out to be an important industrial centre which was a bit of a surprise.

To get to the tourist old town required a drive through the busy commercial centre before arriving on the western bank of the river.  We arrived just after midday and we set about looking for a car park.  We were nervous about this because we visited the city once before in 2007 and had completely failed to understand the car parking arrangements and we had driven around in circles before stopping for only the briefest of stays and then giving up and going to nearby Speyer instead.  We were determined not to make the same mistake this time but despite, as I thought, following all the signs carefully we found ourselves missing them all and doing the circuit again.  I concluded that the signs are either very confusing or I am incredibly stupid!  Luckily lust a millisecond before my patience expired we found an underground car park right in the altstadt.

Germany, Across the Rhine to Strasbourg

We parked the car in an underground car park close to a part of the old city called Petite France which is a popular corner of the city where the river splits up into a number of canals, and cascades through bridges in a small area of attractive half-timbered houses and cobbled streets and we walked through crooked lanes and alleys that followed the southern loop of the river that surrounds the old city.

As we walked the rain followed us across the border from Germany but it was only light and it wasn’t cold so it was quite pleasant walking around the little streets making progress towards the main square and the Cathedral.  The  historic centre, the Grande Île, was classified a World Heritage site by UNESCO in 1988, and this was the first time such an honour was placed on an entire city center.  There were some grand buildings here with lots of medieval half timbered houses that had avoided destruction during the two world wars but the best building of all was the mighty sandstone cathedral which dominates the whole of the city.  At one hundred and forty two metres, it was the world’s tallest building from 1625 to 1874 and it remained the tallest church in the world until 1880, when it was surpassed firstly by Cologne Cathedral and then Ulm Münster.  Today it remains the sixth tallest church in the world and was described by Victor Hugo as a “gigantic and delicate marvel“, the cathedral is visible far across the plains of Alsace and can be seen from as far off as the Vosges mountains in France and the Black Forest in Germany.

There was a very typical French café next to the river where we enjoyed a very gallic snack of croque monsieur that was in total contrast to the Teutonic hospitality that we had become used to over the last few days and it felt strange to be trying to communicate in basic French rather than the basic German that I had been finding so difficult, vin rouge and bier grande seemed much more natural than rot wein and bier vom fass.

While we sat in the Café Montmartre the weather started to improve and the sky started to lighten so we stepped back out into the street and revisited the Cathedral and the surrounding streets and for just a brief moment there was a break in the cloud and a pool of blue sky opened up over the city.  It didn’t last long however and the clouds closed in again as quickly as they had parted and with no real prospect of improvement we walked back to the car park and left the city.

I liked Strasbourg very much but one thing that did let it down was quite a lot of dog waste because the French don’t seem to have a problem with, or a conscience about, letting their precious animals take a poo on the pavement thereby causing maximum inconvenience for other pedestrians and it always pays to keep a watchful eye on where you are walking in France!  The French authorities are trying to tackle the problem but are making little progress and even heavy fines (€440 for a first offence) have had little impact.  In Paris it is estimated that there are sixteen tonnes of dog do every day, which causes four thousand five hundred accidents a week.  Removing it costs €15m a year!

Leaving Strasbourg by a different route from the way we came in was a lot more straightforward than I had imagined except that if there were to be a traffic light count and city league table I wouldn’t be surprised if Strasbourg came top of the list for having the most.  We crossed the Rhine at the industrial town of Kehl   and back in Germany there was an easy drive back to Offenburg where before returning to the Rammersweeir Hoff we needed some alcohol supplies. It was Sunday and we were startled to find that the supermarkets and the convenience stores were all closed and there was a near moment of panic until we tried a garage which thankfully had a fridge full of German beer and some screw cap wines to choose from.

We were back at the hotel quite early again today but this time there was no rugby on the television so we had to channel hop through the German stations and rely on BBC World for an English speaking option.

In contrast to the previous night the dining room was practically empty when we went down for dinner and as this was the last night we treated ourselves from the expensive end of the menu and Kim had a larger than necessary fillet steak and I had a veal cordon bleu which proved to be a real struggle to finish.  This was our final meal at the hotel and the quality of the food had certainly matched what we had enjoyed the previous year.

Germany, Across the Rhine to Alsace

“What is it that gives a frontier its magic? Not the fact that that it is a territorial or political boundary, for these are artificial, dictated by history.  Perhaps it is language that gives to the crossing of a frontier its definitive flavour of voyage.  Whatever the answer the magic is there.  The traveller’s heart will beat to a new rhythm, he will examine the strange new coinage.  Everything will seem to be changed, including the air he breathes”,                                                          Lawrence Durrell.

It was another disappointing morning and there was a slight drizzle in the air but the weather looked brighter to the west so we decided to drive in that direction and visit the French city of Strasbourg on the other side of the Rhine.

After breakfast in the hotel we drove through Offenburg heading for Strasbourg and followed the road to the border where the road crossed the Rhine and passed into France through an immigration control without any sign of activity.  The Rhine is one of the longest and most important rivers in Europe; it begins in the Swiss Alps and flows for one thousand three hundred kilometres to the North Sea.  That’s only about half as long as the Danube and it certainly doesn’t make the top one hundred longest rivers in the world, coming in at only one hundred and eleventh but is still very impressive.  From the very earliest times it has been an important trade route and today it remains a vitally important transport link that serves the industrial cities of the Rhine through France, Germany and the Low Countries and today, just like every other day, it was busy with huge freight barges transporting raw materials to the factories along its banks.

All of a sudden there was absolutely no mistaking the fact that we were in France.  The river is about three hundred metres wide and in that short distance there was a total transformation from one country to another.  The architecture, the language, the dog deposits on the pavements and the French grunge was in total contrast to the clinically clean German towns and villages that had been left behind on the other side of the river.  Strasbourg is the seventh largest city in France and is regarded as the cultural cross roads between Germanic and Latin culture.  In the recent past Strasbourg has been passed between Germany and France like an unwilling baton in a relay race.  Before the French Revolution it was a free city but the fanatical Jacobins seized it for the Republic.  In 1870 after the Franco-Prussian war culminated in the creation of modern Germany and it was ceded to Berlin but after the First-World-War in 1918 it returned to France.  In 1940 the Nazis seized the city and it was liberated again in 1944 and has remained French thereafter.

I have often wondered about national boundaries and how people stop being one nationality and become another and speak another language just because there is a line on a map but here it was easy to understand because the River Rhine creates a very clear boundary between two very different cultures.  Because of this I expected to be a mixed up sort of a place but actually not a bit of it because, thanks to an intense period of Francization immediately after the war including the forced suppression of the use of German and other local dialects, Strasbourg is definitely French which is appropriate really because it was here in 1792 that Rouget de Lisle composed the Revolutionary marching song La Marseillaise, which later became the national anthem of France.  It is an interesting fact that France is one of four nations (together with Andorra, Monaco, and Turkey) that has never signed the Council of Europe Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities.

Strasbourg is in the French region of Alsace which itself lies on the major European political fault line that more or less follows the Rhine and separates France from Germany.  It includes the independent states of the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg and Switzerland which are collectively a legacy of the old independent European state of Burgundy which ultimately failed to survive because of its vulnerable geographical position lying as it did between the states of France and Germany (although not existing as we know it today until 1871) which from the fourteenth century onwards were always grinding horribly against each other.  And it is quite possible to imagine that the disputed regions of Alsace and Lorraine might themselves also have ended up as an independent state.  In fact in November 1918 the Diet of Strasbourg proclaimed an Independent Republic of Alsace-Lorraine but this only lasted a few days before French troops arrived and occupied it.

Germany, Gengenbach and Six Nations Rugby

After a short journey we arrived in Gengenbach which is a small town and a popular tourist destination on the western edge of the Black Forest.  Gengenbach is well known for its traditional fasnacht where the residents of the town closely follow tradition with the wearing of costumes and carved wooden masks and clapping with a Ratsche which is a wooden rattle like those we used to take to football matches before they became a health and safety hazard. After parking the car we walked into the Altsadt which was gaily decorated with bunting and flags for the festival.  In the main square Gengenbach has a traditional town hall which is claimed to be the World’s biggest advent calendar because the twenty-four windows of the eighteenth century town hall represent the twenty-four windows of the calendar.

Just behind the main street there was a warren of tiny crooked streets surrounded on all sides by the most picturesque half timbered buildings and it was almost possible to imagine that we had wandered into a secret fairy tale village of uneven cobbled streets, colourful houses and cottages and might at any moment bump into Little Red Riding Hood or Hansel and Gretel.  This part of the town presents such a traditional image that it was here that some of the scenes from ‘Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory’ were filmed.

Sadly the weather that had temporarily improved while we were in Shiltach had taken a turn for the worst again and it was grey and miserable and we were disappointed by this because we had hoped to get some good pictures of the pretty houses and quaint cobbled streets but after only a short time had to concede that this wasn’t going to happen so we walked back through the market square where some men were erecting a temporary wooden bar in preparation for that evening’s fasnacht but we couldn’t hang around for that and although I offered Kim wasn’t keen to return later either.

So at just after four o’clock we found ourselves back at the Rammersweier Hoff much earlier than we had planned.  The hotel was good with a satellite television station showing the six nations rugby match between Italy and Wales which was much better than what is usually on offer in European hotels, CNN or BBC World, which quickly become repetitive and irritating.  Later there was more rugby football, this time England versus France and although I have never associated Germany with rugby football I was interested to discover that they are in fact ranked twenty-sixth in the world out of a total of ninety five countries affiliated to the International Rugby Board which, let’s be honest, is really quite respectable.

We watched TV, read our books and quite frankly drank too much beer and wine and by the time we made our way down to the restaurant Kim was a bit wobbly on her feet.  The dining room was full and this was not really any surprise because the evening meals were one of the best things about the hotel and we made our selections from the menu which was mostly in German but with some helpful English translations that didn’t always match up exactly but was good enough to prevent against any ordering disasters because if we had been forced to rely on the ethnic version there was a distinct possibility of ordering and receiving something quite unexpected.

The food arrived in generous portions with a big steak for Kim and what looked like a double portion of wiener schnitzel for me and we drank more beer and wine and on account of that the evening ended prematurely early.

Germany, Schiltach, a Perfect Black Forest Village

Triberg didn’t excite us today in the way it had twelve months previously and so we didn’t stay for all of the hour and a half that the parking ticket allowed and we left the town and headed for nearby Shiltach.  Leaving the town we turned off the main road at Sankt Georgan and began to climb towards the town of Schramberg and then I had another disagreement with the lady navigator in the satnav.  For some inexplicable reason she directed us off the obvious way and took along an alternative route along some very minor roads.  There was no explanation for this so I strenuously questioned her competence, shouted at her and then turned her off and plotted my own route back to Schramberg and then to Shiltach where we arrived soon after.

We parked the car next to the river near the tanner’s quarter which is the oldest part of the town.  Here the timber framed buildings were built at the side of the Kinzig in the eighteenth century and were used by the tanners in the production of especially high quality leather goods, which the town was once famous for.

Two thousand years ago the Romans passed through Schiltach and constructed a road that we followed now from the river to the Städle or Old Town where every building was half timbered with colourful facades and brightly painted wooden windows that created a fairy tale ambiance.  There was simply nothing here to spoil the picture book mood and character and in the pretty triangular market place at the heart of the town the fasnacht festival bunting hung high above the cobbled street and old town well, the merchant’s houses and the town hall with its striking Teutonic wall paintings.  After walking around the town we found a little place at the side of the river Schiltach and stopped for refreshment in the immaculate café that was serving fresh cakes and treats.

It’s an astonishing fact but it is surprising just how many times on our travels that we bump into someone who turns out to come from within a few miles of Kim’s home town near Durham but this chance meeting I would never ever have predicted.  In the café we wanted a slice of cake but had some difficulty with the menu so Kim went to ask the man serving behind the counter to help.  When she returned to the table she remarked on the man’s excellent English and then the cake arrived and we thought no more of it.  After a while the man came across and in perfect English said that he guessed that we were from the north of England and then he and Kim narrowed it down from the north to Northumberland, to Newcastle and then Durham and they didn’t stop there either because by the time they had finished they had established that this man’s father had been born in the next village to Kim’s!

The sun was shining now and outside the café a crowd was beginning to congregate because at two o’clock there was an afternoon children’s fasnacht and more and more people in costumes were beginning to gather.  There was half an hour to go so we had a second drink and then walked out into the pleasant sunshine and took up a position to watch.  This procession was nothing to compare with the one the previous night because generally speaking young children don’t ordinarily get drunk before parading.  It was not just children however and there were a number of guilds taking part as well and there was an orderly and good natured march along one side of the river bank.

When the parade had passed by we dawdled back to the car through the market place and then we set off for our final destination.  For the final time we took the road along the Kinzig valley crossing what is the longest river in the Black Forest several times and again passing through Hausach and Haslach towards Offenburg.

Germany, Triberg the Cuckoo Clock Capital of the World

It was a little bit brighter the next morning but not especially thrilling and it didn’t look as though we would get the snow that we had hoped for or the blue skies that we wanted for our photographs.  We had flirted with the idea of taking a journey into the forest on the Black Forest Railway, The Badische Schwarzwaldbahn which passes directly across the Black Forest, through spectacular scenery on a route that is one hundred and fifty kilometres long, ascends six hundred and fifty metres from lowest to highest elevation, and passes through thirty-nine tunnels and over two viaducts but we had done that last year in spectacular winter scenery and we didn’t think it could be recreated on a slightly disappointing and overcast day so we decided to make the trip by car instead.

First we passed through the village of Ortenberg which was an ordinary sort of place except for a large castle standing in a dominant position on a hill with a good view overlooking this part of the Rhine Valley.  It looked in good condition and we found out later that it is now a youth hostel.  Once again we drove through Gengenbach, Haslach and Hausach and then followed the road to the tourist town of Triberg.

In a region that has more than its fair share of tourist attractions, none compare to this small town in the middle of the Schwarzwald because it has just about everything, the tallest waterfall in Germany, souvenir shops with the largest collection of Black Forest-related souvenirs and wood products for sale, and the world’s biggest cuckoo clock.  Nearly every restaurant and café offers ‘authentic‘ Black Forest Cake, and tour groups arrive here by the busload.

Last year Triberg looked stunning under a covering of fresh snow but today by contrast it was disappointing.  There were a lot of untidy road works, the pavements were covered in dirty grit and the shops just looked plain tacky and we could see it for what it really is – one big sticky tourist trap! We paid €1.60 each to visit the waterfall and we climbed the sweeping path until we reached the noisy falls where the Gutach River plunges over a series of cascades two kilometers long and about five hundred meters high.  We couldn’t get very far up the trail however because the path was closed off to visitors after only a hundred metres or so, so we felt a bit cheated by that, grumbled a bit to each other and walked back down and out.

Triberg is the cuckoo clock capital of the forest and the main street was full on both sides of tourist shops selling Black Forest souvenirs and traditional crafts including the famous clocks.  Although the idea of placing a bird in a decorated wooden box did not originate in the Black Forest the cuckoo clock as we know it today comes from this region located in southwest Germany whose tradition of clock making started in the late seventeenth century.  The people of the Black Forest developed the cuckoo clock industry and still come up with new designs and technical improvements which have made it a valued work of art all over the world.  The clock is a symbol of the Black Forest and is probably the favourite souvenir of visitors to Germany, Austria and Switzerland and the centre of production is right here in the middle of the forest in the area of Schonach and Titisee-Neustadt.

We spent some time in the ‘house of a thousand clocks’ amongst the richly decorated time pieces displaying carved leaves, birds, deer heads and all the other forest animals and sometimes the methods of shooting them as well.  And with cuckoo clocks chiming and cuckooing all around us we even considered a purchase but the high prices and the pressure on the meager Ryanair baggage allowance stopped us from making the very basic tourist mistake of buying something for the sake of it and then wondering what on earth to do with it when we got it home.

Germany, The Fasnacht Festival

The fasnacht carnival was in the town of Hausach and it took about forty minutes to drive there passing through Waldkirch again where there were preparations in place for a carnival there later that evening which caused a bit of congestion but nothing too serious and we arrived on schedule in Hausach and finding the place curiously quiet we parked the car in a town centre car park.

There were a few folk in costume wandering around the streets but nothing that made us confident that there was to be a big event here in just about two hours time.  Eventually we enquired of a man in an elaborate green costume and he confirmed that soon the road would be closed in preparation for the event.  Fearful of being stuck in the car park with no way out until tomorrow morning we returned and moved it to a location about five hundred metres out of town where we were confident we would not be inconvenienced by the road closure and later we were glad that we did.

As we walked back into town we passed final preparations for a couple of beer tents and judging by the amount of alcohol being delivered there was going to be some serious drinking tonight.  The festival of Fasnacht is a carnival in Alemannic folklore that takes place in the few days before Lent in Southern Germany, Switzerland and Alsace.  The Alemanni were German tribes who lived in this part of Europe nearly two thousand years ago and this area remains characterised by a form of German with a distinct dialogue called Alemannic.  The celebration literally means ‘Fasting Eve’ as it originally referred to the day before the fasting season of Lent.  The schools are all closed for this festival and all over the Black Forest there are six days of parties and making merry.

During this period a sort of doughnut is popular and these are called fasnachts that are a traditional fatty treat that are produced as a way to empty the pantry of lard, sugar, fat and butter, which are forbidden during Lent.  This is a catholic tradition but in protestant England we call this Shrove Tuesday and serve pancakes instead of doughnuts, it is much the same thing.

The tradition dates back to pre-Christian days and has the appearance of an almost pagan affair in which the old traditions of driving out winter have mingled with pre-Lenten celebrations. The participants dress as spirits, demons, and witches wearing heavy wooden masks that are intricately carved and handed down from generation to generation.

There was a couple of hours until the start of the parade so we found a friendly looking gasthaus where people were starting to gather for the event and ate a good meal and drank a couple of beers while we watched the event stewards preparing for their duties by drinking several litres of pils each.  As the start time approached we paid our bill, left the gasthaus and took up a viewing position at the side of the road.

In the distance we could hear music and then in an adjacent street we could see the torchlight parade approaching.  This particular Fasnacht takes place every two years and celebrates the driving out of the witches that represent the banishing of winter.  First came the witches with their gruesome masks who swished the streets with their besom brooms then a procession of goblins and other fantastic creatures.  Every now and again there was a band of drummers beating wildly, ringing bells and playing trumpets and trombones to drive the witches out of town.  There were seventy-two groups participating and these are all unique guilds or clubs who have the same uniform and identity.  Some were scary witches with grotesque features others wore animal masks of all kinds, as well as masks of mythological characters that figure in local folklore and history, everyone in the group wears the same costume, walks the same and behaves in the same way.

 

That’s only until they have had too much drink of course and as the groups kept coming the parade became more and more boisterous as the marchers kept darting into the crowd to play pranks and encourage participation.  People were dragged to the floor in mock fighting, others had hats and shoes stolen and one group picked on the pretty girls and had a trick of tying their legs together at the ankles with plastic cable ties.  It was all good fun and the marches whooped and shouted and jumped about on wooden poles as they all made their steady progress towards the beckoning beer tent.

As it came towards the end we walked alongside the marchers and not being brave enough to join them at the bar we made our way back to the car past groups of tidily teenagers in fancy dress who were all getting ready for Hausach’s biggest night of the year and with the booming of the drums ringing in our ears we drove out of the town and took the direct route back to Offenburg and the Rammersweier Hoff hotel.