Koln is one of the major Karneval celebrations. While we did not attend the big parade in Koln itself, we went to the parade in Porz-Wahn with friends and coworkers from the DLR. After lunch at our host’s home, we headed out to find the parade and were told “Follow the music”.
The parade was less like a 4th of July parade and more akin to a Halloween street party. There was loud Karneval music coming from many different sources, Christian and I were dressed up as classic kolnish jecks but there was a great variety of costumes including pirates, nurses and doctors, a variety of animals, and many variations on “jecks” in bright and flamboyant dress. While we waited for the parade to approach, everyone was drinking (primarily nips and variations of sweet liquors) and dancing to the various Karneval Musiks.
The parade itself consisted of many floats pulled by tractors (not pickup trucks) which often had parade workers (wheel angels) walking between the tractor wheels and the crowd (which was pressed quite close to the parade floats). Most of the floats had a speaker system with their own music playing and a “float party” throwing favors to the crowd. Unlike other parades, the favors were not just small candy but also whole chocolate bars, boxes of pralines, small and medium toys, flowers, pocket tissue packets (among other random toiletry items and other small prize items
One of the floats that was most amusing to me was a ‘Texas’ themed float. While was decorated with foam 40 gallon hats and which had a party dressed in cowboy and native American costume. Christian and I were both excited to finally hear a familiar song that we knew how to dance to- “Cotton Eyed Joe”. But no one from our group had heard of it before much less knew about the dance.
We left after about 2 hours of the parade and made our way to the train station (more than half a mile away) and the parade was all along the route to the train station and went further beyond. According to those who stayed the whole thing lasted more than 3.5 hours start to finish.