Montag, 15. Februar 2010

Rosenmontagsumzug! / Rose-Monday carnival parade/ MyWorld


Der erste Teil der Bilder vom Rosenmontagsumzug 2010 in Mainz!

Maybe people are interested to see what is going on right now in the city in Germany where I live. Here is the first part of a series of photos from Rose Monday street carnival parade in the city of Mainz in Germany.

The bad news first: we are having a hard winter this year. It is cold, temperatures were below zero centigrade most of the time since the beginning of January! And we had lots of snow, unbelievable amounts of snow! It is still snowing from time to time, streets in the morning today were white again.

Now the good news: Life is extremely colourful (and loud) these days due to the hightime of carnival season! And the city of Mainz is one of the big centers for carnival (we in Mainz call it "Fassenacht") along the river Rhine.

Today, on Rose-Monday, despite the lousy cold temperatures, about fourhundred thousand people came to see and celebrate the parade in the city! The parade started in a quarter of the city called "Neustadt" at 11:11 and came to an end in another part of the city at about 16:30 in the afternoon. The parade itself had a lenght of approx. 7,5 km lasting almost 3 hours with approx. 10.000 active participants including many music groups (3.500 musicians!) and approx. 150 carnival floats.

With a couple of photos I will try to give you an idea how colurful these days are right now. And in addition, we have lots of music everywhere with many marching bands. Not only today, but we had it in the past days too!




MyWorld Tuesday

Rosenmontag in Mainz!

Kurz vor 10 Uhr, die Boppstrasse in der Neustadt ist leer, noch fast ohne Narren.
Die ersten Wagen kommen die verschneite Josephstrasse lang, um sich dort aufzustellen!


Ernste Gesichter bei den Zugordnern: wo bleiben nur die Wagen?

Um kurz vor 10 Uhr war es noch richtig leer auf den schneebedeckten Strassen und Bürgersteigen in der Mainzer Neustadt, wo der Zug beginnen wird. Innerhalb einer halben Stunde hat sich dieses Bild völlig gewandelt. Von allen Seiten strömen die Narren, Musikgruppen und Wagen herbei. Um 11:11 geht's los!

Rosenmontag in Mainz: der Umzug hat begonnen!