a fesches Madl

Another good weather day, Angie out for an early ride, Flash doing well today too. Now that he is off pain killers, his arthritis is showing more signs of plaguing him. After picking him up, back home to more log splitting.

Early afternoon thought I would pop over to nearby Markt Rettenbach to see the carnival procession. The procession is organised by a "sub" village called Engetried, I suspect with a population of about 300. Set off with little hope of seeing more than two guys in lederhosen. Well how wrong can you be? 38 floats make their way from Engetried to Markt Rettenbach. I won't write more as I have posted a dreadful video on Youtube and some stills on Flickr. Used my normal Nikon photo camera held above my head  to shoot over 5 rows in front of me and could seldom see what was going on. The camera is not good at videos, even less when you get a smudge on the lens.

Angie hadn't gone along, thinking like me it would be boring. She kicked herself when she saw the video.


The Bliped "A feschs Madl" (Bavarian for a good looking girl) was seated on top of one of the floats. She wouldn't give me her mobile number. Some of you may remember Elvis Presley sang to her great grandmother, partly in German - he was stationed in Bavaria during his military service

Just as the procession ended, at least one of the many ambulances on duty took off with blue lights flashing and sirens wailing. Turned out to be a car accident just up the road from us. As I was within sight of our house, was flagged down by an oncoming motorist and told the road was closed just a bit further on. Half an hour later drove the dogs through the village to do a walk, the village fire brigade at the crossing stopping traffic coming down our road. Told Angie as she was planning to go to Ottobeuren an hour later. Now men are said to not be good at listening - well it's not just a male problem. Angie thought she would ignore my warning. Naturally it didn't work, the fire brigade at the scene were dumbfounded how she had managed to get past the barriers, flashing blue lights and man with lit, red "Stop" hand signal. Just as his colleague in the village was when she turned around and had to go back.

For the Brits, a bit of explanation.
Carnival is BIG in the Rhine area around Mainz, Cologne and Duessldorf. The further south one goes, the less activity. Northern Bavaria known as Franconia, is the biggest area. By the time you get down to us, it's pretty quiet. Tomorrow Monday is the big day in the north while here it's Tuesday which is treated as a half working day for shops and offices - not an official holiday but treated as such. It takes a bit of time to get used to Fashing as it's called in the South (Karneval in the North). However somehow feel people are glad to let their hair down a bit at the moment with all the negative things going on.