Sandwiched between clowns, chickens, snow queens and some ‘Narren’, I spent part of this evening happily dancing in the street to live music to celebrate the Grosses Narren Treffen coming to Konstanz.
A Narr (plural, Narren) roughly translates as ‘fool’ or ‘joker’, and they are a staple of Karneval/Fasching, which is a big week-long festival all over Germany before Lent begins, with lots of costumes, music, dancing, and, I would assume, drinking of beer. It is said that the ‘carnival season’ is actually the fifth season within Germany, and judging by tonight’s pre-Fasching celebration, it should be a lot of fun when the time comes. This weekend is the Grosses Narren Treffen (literally translated, Big Meeting of Fools), in which groups from around Baden-Würtemberg who arrange Fasching in their own towns, all join up together to have a pre-Fasching mini-Karneval each year.
Not having really understood how big a deal Karneval is within Germany, I did not quite know what to expect, and was rather underdressed as part of the minority of non-costumed people. Anything goes it seems, and Narrens themselves appear to differ between groups, with varieties in colour, scale-size, facial decoration and general shape of silhouette achieved!
I decided to go along to the Monsterkonzert, which turned out to be a meeting of many groups of Narren Big Bands, playing lots of jolly tunes, and basically having a bit of a street party. Not realising the event appeared to begin with a procession of some kind, I did manage to find myself walking along with some of the Narren with confused faces of little princesses and witches looking at me, trying to work out what I had come as!
Having worked out that being in the parade without costume is not great etiquette; I sidled off to stand on the street side, only to have an entire brass band seem to follow me to this position. I ended up behind a Narr carrying a metallic blue marching tuba (tuba decorations appear to be important, I also spotted a group with cow patterns), clad in a glittery blue robe, complete with frilly sparkly lace and fake fur. Happily I bopped around behind him, trying to look like I wasn’t a total lost tourist, and wondering whether the teddy bear suspended on the end of the trombone was going to come flying off at some point!
This group’s playing over, the next group began, which seemed to annoy my new favourite Tuba-Narr. Turning to me, he commented that the real way to have a Monsterkonzert was to have all the groups playing altogether at the same time (preferably all with the same piece of music). He also allowed me to stand inside his tuba for a bit, which was quite heavy and kindly laughed along with me as I attempted to bob around holding it in time to the music. Seeing the sympathetic looks of my fellow audience members, it was clear that they realised I had not got a clue what was going on – various older couples gave me the knowing “You don’t really understand what’s going on here, do you?” head tilt with small smile – clearly I will have to get a costume for the real thing…
I decided to go along to the Monsterkonzert, which turned out to be a meeting of many groups of Narren Big Bands, playing lots of jolly tunes, and basically having a bit of a street party. Not realising the event appeared to begin with a procession of some kind, I did manage to find myself walking along with some of the Narren with confused faces of little princesses and witches looking at me, trying to work out what I had come as!
Having worked out that being in the parade without costume is not great etiquette; I sidled off to stand on the street side, only to have an entire brass band seem to follow me to this position. I ended up behind a Narr carrying a metallic blue marching tuba (tuba decorations appear to be important, I also spotted a group with cow patterns), clad in a glittery blue robe, complete with frilly sparkly lace and fake fur. Happily I bopped around behind him, trying to look like I wasn’t a total lost tourist, and wondering whether the teddy bear suspended on the end of the trombone was going to come flying off at some point!
This group’s playing over, the next group began, which seemed to annoy my new favourite Tuba-Narr. Turning to me, he commented that the real way to have a Monsterkonzert was to have all the groups playing altogether at the same time (preferably all with the same piece of music). He also allowed me to stand inside his tuba for a bit, which was quite heavy and kindly laughed along with me as I attempted to bob around holding it in time to the music. Seeing the sympathetic looks of my fellow audience members, it was clear that they realised I had not got a clue what was going on – various older couples gave me the knowing “You don’t really understand what’s going on here, do you?” head tilt with small smile – clearly I will have to get a costume for the real thing…
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