why Karneval really is the German Halloween.

I know I've compared Karneval to Halloween in the past because of the whole tradition of wearing costumes. Well, after finally experience Karnival first hand, I can safely say that - aside from happening all day instead of only first when the sun goes down - I stand wholeheartedly by my original assertion. 

See there is this parade (ok, not exactly Halloweeny, but bear with me). By the time we got there at 1pm the parade had already started on the far side of the city. It was supposed to go until 2:30 pm, so we tried to find a place among the masses to get a good view. This proved much more difficult than expected, and we ended up finding a good view that was unfortunately very removed from the actual parade. 

After a good while of enjoying the parade from this vantage point, we decided to head down into the crowds, expecting the parade to end shortly anyway.

Little did we know this was apparently a never-ending parade. I don't know where the city of Cologne's website got it's information, but this parade did not end at 2:30. In fact, it was still going strong when worked our way up to the front lines around 4pm. And that's where things got exciting (and here comes the Halloween-ish part).

The candy. Oh the candy. I know people throw candy at parades in the US, but this was like that on steroids. I'm talking entire chocolate bars, even complete boxes of chocolate. Not just thrown here and there into the crowd but seriously continuously chucked among the masses. If you looked away for 1 second you were at risk of chocolate to the face - trust me, that's how I caught a few of my pieces. And it wasn't just candy. The occasional stuffed animal was tossed in, and all kinds of individual flowers. I was pretty proud of my catches. And the people living in the buildings with windows facing the parade found a pretty ingenious method for collecting the goods.

I also loved that even the Policemen across from us were stocking up on the goods.

We stood there for at least an hour watch the parade - the floats, the marching bands, the costumes - catching candy, and just enjoying the whole atmosphere.

Finally, the parade that was supposed to end at 2:30  drew to an end around 7. And as we headed back to the train station that night - in costume, with bags full of candy collected throughout the day - I couldn't help but smile for finally having the Halloween that I'd missed for the past 2 years!