2019 - 11.11.2019 - Carnival in Cologne

A whole SWAT team, alongside the FBI and several police officers. We are not in an American crime series, we are at the Cologne Carnival on 11.11.2019. And everything you know from TV series seems to be trendy this year. Various groups in red overalls with Dali masks (like in 'Money Heist') are also out and about. But of course, there are thousands of other costumes as well.

For example, the carnival store Deiters thrives on the costume enthusiasm of the people of Cologne. Here, everything for carnival is sold year-round. Such a business would probably go bankrupt for us, but here it's always crowded and fun. Everyone seems to enjoy dressing up. And visiting there was really fun for us too. We had a good reason to shop there because we wanted to be prepared at least a little bit on 11.11. at 11:11 am.

Even though we had to go home in the early afternoon, we wanted to at least get a taste of the carnival atmosphere.

And we were not the only ones who traveled from near or far. It's hard to estimate how many visitors came on 11.11. The train station was crowded with carnival fans. Most of them came already dressed up and in large groups. But there were also some who changed their clothes in the train station hall.

But even in the days leading up to it, we kept meeting groups and entire clubs who traveled to Cologne specifically for this. Also from our hometown. Warm greetings to the Hayn Carnival Association!

The whole city of Cologne and thousands of visitors are out and everyone wants to party. And naturally, even completely unrelated to the culture, tourists from Asia are swept along. It's really cute to see how they first stand there and then join in dancing.

It starts at the Cathedral, which is right next to the train station. One could almost say that there's a band playing on every corner and of course, alcohol is flowing. But if you want to see the well-known Cologne groups play live, you have to pay an entrance fee. Specifically designated areas for this purpose are, for example, the Heumarkt and the Tanzbrunnen.

Unfortunately, we didn't have time for that. Our train was already heading back home at 1:30 pm.

In the train, we were once again real oddities with our hats and received strange looks. They all simply have no idea about carnival.