The carnival parade at Bodelshausen

This is one of the most cultural and very typical kind of event in south East Germany. This year the 66 groups were out in their extraordinary, super freaky outfits and costumes, scarring everybody who laid eyes on them with their monstrous sounds and witches like screams, you could hear the music from as far as the Bodelshausen train station, the drumming and chanting and with smoke everywhere, but as much as it was scary it was a lot of fun for the 3000 viewers who were at the parade.

Even though the weather was not really great, the lovers of this parade managed to come out in numbers, the group from South Africa amongst the viewers stunned and freaked out with what they saw; were quite scared at first but as they started getting used to the environment and the parade started having a lot of fun. Lesego being the first who was a bit afraid of weird things was standing at the back just for protection services, which brought a lot humour ,and Sinothile being short and small got her into a lot of trouble because the witches attempted to steal her a number of times. Malan not surprisingly stopped the scariest witches for pictures, while Matt and Tom were all over the place fascinated by the tricks which were done at the carnival. The group was really having a great time with a lot of laughter, screams and singing; Yaseen and Wayde being the leaders of it all. And thanks to Monica who made sure that everybody was happy and ok and the tour guide for the day Elizabeth who explained the details of the carnival which were not clear.

The carnival for the South Africans was one of the highlights of the German stay and we learnt a lot from it, which we can take back home. The carnival parade Bodelshausen 2012 was superfantafabulous (super, fantastic, and fabulous).

Simphiwe Protus