Since only ten days, the carnival season in Germany is over. Many people went crazy, celebrated for days without a pause and of course, a lot of carnival parades took place. In Aachen, one of the most western cities of Germany, 35 AEGEEans took part in the three-hour-long procession and spread Europtimism throughout their motto “Europe is colourful, and it’s good this way”.
Carnival is an important celebration in Germany, especially around the Rhineland and Mainz. It is so big that most schools do not even open on the so-called “Rose Monday”, the highlight of the celebrations, or even the following day. Monday the 16th, in German “Rosenmontag”, big parades marched through many of the North Rhine-Westphalian cities.
In Aachen, 168 groups took part, one of them being a group of AEGEE-Aachen members. The motto of the 35 participants was “Europe is colourful, and it’s good this way”. While most groups in such parades pick the same costumes for all their members, the AEGEEans all looked very different since their aim was to depict a Europe with many variants. This is why their costumes showed all kinds of European stereotypes, from a “typical” German Bavarian, over Greeks in togas, a Norwegian Viking and an Irish leprechaun to a Dutchie with orange hair and a bike, and many more. Of course, there were also some polar bears since they are a necessary addition to Europe as well. Even some guests from their Twin Antenna, AEGEE-Warszawa, took part in the parade and enjoyed it as well!
In the nicest of sunshine, the members of AEGEE-Aachen had a great time while they walked through the city where around 260.000 visitors watched the parade. Leo Büsch, main organizer of the event simply calls it “fantastic“! “We got recognised by the people as a very colourful crowd and got greeted by Aachen’s major and one member of the European Parliament and former major of Aachen with huge pleasure.”
The parade went on for around three hours and while the AEGEEans gave out kilograms of sweets, as it is the tradition, they also handed out 2000 colourful stickers with their slogan in German. Especially after recent demonstrations in Germany, the topic of xenophobia had to be tackled and by doing it in a fun, yet very public way, AEGEE-Aachen definitely accomplished their goal.
Last year, they had already taken part with the motto “Show your flag for Europe” and also displayed a very colourful group which consisted of people wearing different European flags. For next year, it is sure that they will be part of the parade again: “We had 20 participants last year and 35 this year, so I count for over 60 participants for next year and hope to have even more international guests”, Leo concludes.
Find more pictures in their Facebook album!
Written by Katja Sontag, AEGEE-Aachen