what do Penguins, Mario, a cross-dressing Heidi and Jesus have in common?

You can find them all in Cologne during Karnival! 

I know spoiled the whole costumes found at Karneval post by posting about the coolest costume there yesterday. But there were a lot of good runners up. 

My favorite - mostly because of the complete randomness factor - was a Mario walking alongside a cigarette smoking Jesus with a beer in his belt. 

We also kept running into the same pair of cross-dressing Heidis for the first hour or so. I was only able to snap a picture of the one, and I know it's not necessarily the most original or exciting costume, but there was something so hilarious about this pair and their complete nonchalance about the whole dressed in dirndl drag thing. 

There were, of course, the creative, culturally relevant, and hilarious costumes to be found about. Including these meme guys. Loved it. 

But, when all else failed, there was always the safe fall-back plan of onesies with an animal hood. That's what about 90% of everyone in cologne had. And I can't deny, it was elegant in it's simplicity!