Rosenmontag

We have arrived in Austria at the start of a holiday season. Last Thursday, our first day here, was the day of the Opernball — a huge and very flashy ball which is somewhere near the beginning (I haven’t quite sorted out with Oma whether it IS the beginning) of the holiday of Fasching, which is a kind of Carneval prior to Lent beginning. There was a ton of tv coverage of it, and front page pictures the next morning in the papers — all of which seemed excited that Paris Hilton had “graced” the ball with her presence. I gather it’s the ball of the year that is most striving for celebrity.

This afternoon Oma called out to me to come and watch on TV, where they were broadcasting "Rosenmontag" day parades from Germany. "Rosenmontag" is the Monday (Rose Monday?) of Faschings, followed by FaschingsDienstag (which I think is what we call Mardi Gras), and then Aschendemittwoch (or Ash Wednesday). The parade I'm watching right now, from Mainz and then from Dusseldorf in Germany, is WAY more political than any other parade I've ever seen. (Although, not ever having done Mardi Gras in New Orleans, perhaps that one has some political tinges?) It's also at least as elaborate as any of the televised parades I've seen in the US. The floats are huge, beautifully colored, finely sculpted, and so complete that you can only rarely see the truck or trailor carrying them.

Anyway, I just watched a huge float go past that had a statue of a grimacing Bush smelling the very hairy underarm of Ahmedinejad, upon whose torso was inscribed "aschial de boëse" (or axis of evil). They even had fake smoke flowing out from his underam. He also had "Iran" written across his hair, in case anyone else missed it. He was a huge and very muscular guy, whereas Bush was much smaller and looked much more timid and like he'd smelled something he really didn't like.

Another float was of Pope Benedict smashing a wildly riding car past a pylon, "fahrschule" written on its top (driving school), and a longer phrase whose meaning I'm guessing was something like "he needs more practice."

Here's one with an Earth person (a papier maché statue with the globe as its head) bent over, farting out a large papier maché blue cloud that says CO2 on it, and the blue curls up into "die katastrophe" of climate change.

There are, of course, tons of clowns, dozens of bands from every little village, cheerleaders with pom pons, baton twirlers, kids throwing candy off the top of floats, and much of what you'd see in any other parade I've ever gone to. But the political commentary is a fun addition.

The TV commentators just started yelling -- Yoko Ono, Yoko Ono! -- and the camera did indeed pan towards someone in large glasses who could be her. Who knows? But clearly celebrity sighting is part of this event, too.

In any case, this is "faschingsfieber" (Faschings fever) -- in Germany, at least. Apparently there was also a parade here in Vienna on Saturday, but we were too tired and too busy settling in to notice. It's fascinating to me that countries such as Germany and Austria, which are so much more secularized than the US, should have such large and public religious holidays. Makes you wonder what we mean by "secular," huh?