Germany’s carnival season kicks off on Monday and tens of thousands of revelers are again expected in the western city of Cologne, one of the main locations for carnival fun.
The season starts annually in Germany on the 11th day of the 11th month – November 11 – at 11:11 am and ends on Ash Wednesday. It has a centuries-old tradition and marks the run-up to the main celebrations leading up to the Christian season of Lent, which leads to Easter.
Large crowds are expected on Monday, especially in Cologne’s old town and the student district.
The police are deploying more officers than last year, with 1,400 officers, both men and women, mainly tasked with enforcing a widespread knife ban. Knife bans have been introduced in Germany at public events in response to suspected Islamist attacks earlier this year.
In Mainz, another carnival hotspot in the state of Rhineland-Palatinate, the holidays are also celebrated at 11:11 am. About 9,000 people are expected on the city’s central square, Schillerplatz.
The event will begin at 11 a.m. with a warm-up session, and at 11:11 a.m. the tune called “Narrhallamarsch” — a portmanteau of the words for jester, Valhalla and march — is expected to ring out, heralding the carnival season with a thrice-thundering “Hellau.”
The official start of the new carnival season is also being celebrated in other states.
The celebrations will be lively in the southern city of Würzburg, in the Bavarian region of Lower Franconia, where the 11th Würzburg Carnival Association of 11 will proclaim its new princely couple.
