Waldsassen, Germany / Fasching

The first week with no basketball was great.  The evenings were much more relaxed and we had time to eat a decent weeknight dinner without a stopwatch for the first time in 3 months.  Since we'd been travelling the past two weekends Friday and Saturday were very low key once again.  Sunday morning, however, we got up early because we were going to church with John and Clarice (John is a contractor from Minnesota).

John and Clarise have lived here for almost two years now and are leaving in April.  They found the church we were going to in a feature in a German tourism magazine.  The church is in the small town of Waldsassen on the border of the Czech Republic.  John had said the church is one of the most beautiful he's seen and it certainly lived up to his billing.

Waldsassen Abbey (built in 1130)

We arrived a little bit early so we had a chance to wander around a bit and then stayed for the service (Roman Catholic).  It was a great service with a lot of music and a fantastic choir.  The big church was pretty much full which surprised me given the size of the town.  I got a little guidebook from the church that I have yet to read, unfortunately, but I cannot understand how a little community like this was able to build such a magnificent church.

There is a sign just off the picture that said "No pictures" so I only took one...

After the service we visited another small church a few miles away in the tiny village of Kappl.  Another interesting little church basically in the middle of a field.

St. Emmeram in Kappl

It was getting close to lunch and Haaken talked us all into going to McDonalds.  Can't remember if I've noted this before but the McDonald's in Germany are very nice and the food seems much fresher.  John and Clarise dropped us off and we had about an hour before we were off to the annual Fasching parade.

In Southern Germany the people recognize and celebrate a 5th season known as Fasching (Carnival) or in some places Fastnacht.  The season starts in on November 11 at 11:11 am and finishes on Ash Wednesday.   This season was spawned by the Roman-Catholic Lenten season, during which no parties or other celebrations were held and people refrained from eating meat, dairy, fats and sugar.  Traditionally, in the days before Lent, all rich food and drink had to be disposed of.  Instead of throwing it all away, communities started holding an annual celebration the weekend before Ash Wednesday in order to consume all the food they had to give up during Lent.

In our area the annual Fasching parade was held on Sunday in Vilseck, which is another German / US Army community about 20 minutes away.  The parade is basically a big costume party.  The parade was led by the mayor of Vilseck and the Grafenwoehr Training Area Commander Colonel Smiley.  Following them was your typical small town parade - local businesses, car dealers, clubs etc. throwing candy to the kids and waving.  One thing that was a bit different was nearly all of the people in the parade were drinking heavily and had portable bars on their floats.  There were a ton of people there  to watch as well, all with alcohol in hand.  This one old lady across the street kept pulling out mini-bar bottles of liquor from her purse and pouring them in her Coke.  Many of the floats had powerful sounds systems playing all kinds of party music.

Donuts before Candy

Pre-Parade Crowd

This guy was spraying the crowd with beer.

Those are mini-kegs under the riders.

The kids dressed up and collected a bagful of candy each over the course of the parade.  It ended in the main square of Vilseck where a few food vendors were set up along with a rock band.  We didn't stay for the after party because it wasn't really a scene for the kiddos.

The kids also had Fasching celebrations at school.  Haaken had his the Thursday before.  When I dropped him off his teachers were all dressed up and they had music playing and were dancing around the room.  It sounds like they had a puppeteer come as well.  Elise and Lydia's school had a Fasching parade on post.  Colonel Smiley and the mayor of Grafenwoehr led the parade followed by a German band and then the kids.  There were no spectators and we just did about a 20 minute loop around the hotel and back.  It seemed sort of odd to me, but the kids had a good time.

Mayor of Grafenwoehr in the background (w/ the sombrero)