Katherine LaPoint: Raising the Carnival Tree

It's that time of year again! Fastnach or Fasnet or Karneval… I get confused to what to call this week of partying before Lent and in my "researching" I came across this detailed description of the holiday. AND it's in English. Go figure.

Anyway, on Saturday, we decided that the weather was too, too nice (what a winter/spring we're having! GORGEOUS!) not to walk the five minutes to the town center to watch the erecting of the carnival tree. We went down after lunch to view the process and it was what I expected. A lot of music, a lot of drinking, a lot of shooting the shit with your neighbors. It took a couple of hours to put this very, very tall tree up and it ended with a marching band jam followed by a very long, very loud (maybe alcohol induced) speech. It was fabulous.

To see old Fastnach posts from a couple years ago (pre-Max when we drank a lot more) go here, here, here, here and here.