Spectators dressed as pirates and Mickey Mouse line the sidewalks, waiting with nervous energy for the parade to start. A gang of children stands warily in the street, staring ahead at something I can’t see; their stances suggest they’re set to flee at the slightest hint of danger. They stand motionless for so long that I lose interest (slave to the “instant gratification” culture as I am) and turn back to my friends, so the children’s sudden delighted scream is jarring. I look back just in time to see them disappear, melting into the crowd or flying down the street, pursued by a demon in red felt.
The demon’s face is walnut, carved in the likeness of a snarling wolf, and he wears a monstrous tri-fold hat decorated with carefully laid seashells, accented at the corners with enormous crimson pompoms. He stops just in front of me and snarls down the street at his disappearing prey. He brandishes a long stick tipped with what look like beige balloons, and then explosively slaps the balloons downwards against the pavement. Thoom! They strum with a hollow bounce against the asphalt.
But they aren’t balloons, not really.
They’re real, inflated pig bladders. Welcome to Elzach, hope you enjoy your stay.
The chasing of children was merely a prelude to the reason I’d ridden a train 40 minutes into the Black Forest countryside. The real show starts when a veritable stream of these monsters comes charging down the street, a burst artery of bright red on this dull February afternoon. They brandish their pig-bladder-sticks and howl a guttural chant. Symbolically, they have come on this cold winter’s day to cleanse the land of the demons that cause the seasonal cold and infertility. But there’s mischief afoot here, too. The endless tide of monsters is regularly punctuated by orderly rows of marching bands, and the second the musicians take up a cheery tune, the monsters all perk up. The music changes the parade from a flow to more of a beehive, with everyone running back and forth. Some of the beasts are content to just dance in the center. But the others….
A pig-faced beast skips down the edge of the street, whacking every head he can reach with his balloons. A witch-face reaches out with an extending wooden grabber, plucking the cap off an elderly man, who tries to grab it back while giggling with glee. The poor 50-year-old woman in front of me (who I’d been using as a shield from the onslaught of pig-ballooning) is bear-hugged and nearly dragged down the street. A 5-year-old floats past me on the street, carried in a one-armed grasp by a monster. The worst ones are those who come in with a sneak attack, lowering their pig bladders to sensually caress the side of your face when you’re not looking. The second time this happens to me, I’m finally able to place what they smell like: a pile of wet earthworms. The smell permeates everything, and even long after I’ve left and returned to Freiburg I’m convinced it’s stuck inside my nostrils.
After the short but traumatizing parade, everyone disbands to warm up in the various bars, which are filled to their absolute capacity with adults and children alike. Elzach is a sleepy town every other day of the year, buried deep in this lost valley of the Black Forest (the lone train track literally dead ends at this station). The bars can barely handle the influx. A local kebap shop has moved its tables and turned its tiny interior into a dance club, with lasers and bad techno. We duck through the closest pub door and sit next to an old man sporting a dashing shirt printed with a fake six-pack pattern.
If we’d been hoping to escape the madness of the streets, though, we were sadly mistaken. The mischief was hot on our heels and followed us through the door.
Every so often a felted demon rips open the door and slaps his balloons on the ground with a roar. We all flinch, pulling up our hoods with a nervous giggle while we desperately avoid eye contact with the newcomer, hoping this evasion will be enough to save us from the wet kiss of a pig bladder. At least it seems that most of the monsters are more interested in the beer than the tomfoolery, and they all head straight for the bar to get pints that keep disappearing under their hoods.
Finally I just begin to ignore the newcomers, and predictably, it’s my downfall. Out of nowhere a masked stranger comes up and grabs me from behind – chair and all – and tips me backwards in a calculated motion. I jerk and squeak; the motion set off that desperate I’m-falling-and-need-to-wake-up response, but fortunately the stranger holds my chair fast and tips me upright again, growling something in German. Heart racing, I pivot my chair and watch the door with attentive paranoia until we leave.
It seems insane that this holiday could be related in any way to the topless, bead-throwing, king-cake-eating shenanigans of Mardi Gras as it’s celebrated in places like New Orleans or Rio. But Fasnet and Mardi Gras are all part of the bigger festival season of Carnival that’s celebrated all over the Christian world. Even the pig bladder balloons are tied in to the tradition: they’re one of the only parts left after the family pigs are slaughtered for the “Mardi Gras” style feast. Carnival is a little more familiar up north in places like Köln (where the festival season technically begins in November). It’s only in the south where tradition still has its claws set deep into the festivities.
The other huge half of German Karneval is Rosenmontag, or Rose Monday, the day before Mardi Gras (Fat Tuesday). The slate sky was spitting fat snowflakes as I wandered downtown to the Freiburg Münster, and I intentionally planted myself behind a group of kids wearing technicolor wigs and mismatched socks. Promptly at 2:11 P.M. (an intentionally silly start time) the monsters started their march, although here they come in smaller clumps dressed in a thousand different styles of costume: an endless stream of mice, witches, ogres, trolls, pirates, Native Americans (for some reason?) passed us by.
The gaggle of kids in front of me becomes an immediate target for the monsters to pick on, although the fun here is a little more family-friendly. A shaggy ogre shrieks in their faces. A jester taunts them with lollipops, not letting them grab the candies from him. A gangster grabs fistfuls of shredded paper and smashes it into the hair of one girl, spending ten seconds working the paper bits deep into her tresses. This never-ending show of monsters picking on children is exactly why I’d chosen to stand here, even though it meant I had to listen to their endless pre-teen chatter. Maybe that makes me a sociopath, but at least everyone was smiling.
The juxtaposition of these two wildly different parades on back-to-back days left me delighted, confused, and just a tiny bit disgusted (it’s hard to come back from being kissed by a wet pig bladder). Seeing real tradition delights me, especially when the locals are so deeply proud and excited to partake in their city’s unique events (parade participants in Elzach are given colored ribbons each year, which they hang from the corners of their hats, and some had dozens of ribbons from different years). Seeing things like this is a major reason I love so much to travel: to see citizens embracing their cultural traditions while enjoying themselves, and picking on some kids along the way.
Window Seat Odyssey 
Always a pleasure, learning about the world through your writings!
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