Fasching

I'm a little late with this post, but oh well. About 2 weeks ago was Fasching, Mardi Gras, Fat Tuesday, Shrove Tuesday, Carnival or whatever you would like to term it. The day before lent starts so we are all on the same page.
Here in this part of the world Fasching is celebrated and it is much like Halloween back home in that everyone dresses up and wears a costume. Sure there are a lot of younger people that do it, but there are also quite a few older people that dress up as well. This year during the day we went to parade in a nearby town and then at night we went with some friends to a "Masked Ball." The requirement was you had to wear nice clothes and a mask. Well, we had nice clothes but no mask. Over here you can buy one, but they also have places that rent out costumes and you can get almost anything you can think of. The price? Only 5 euros a day. Not too bad if you are going to rent it one day and return it the next. The place we went to was small but there were so many people coming and going getting costumes for the night - from a police person, to a chicken costume, to a power ranger. All you had to do was pick out a costume and fill out a card of where you lived and your telephone number and you were set. This is where we got our masks.
So we got all dressed up and went to our party and the place was packed.....or, not so much. Instead of having a full house there was maybe 12-15 people there. So we stayed for a little bit and went somewhere else.
In Wels, in the middle of the city is an area where there are a couple bars all under the same roof. That's where everybody was. It was packed. We tried to walk from one side of the mass of people to the other and pretty much had to pinball our way off one person to the next to get to the other side.
Here we got to see all different kinds of costumes and had a pretty good time, we even saw a couple of the guys from the team just hanging out as well. This and one other place is where we spent our night and had a good time. People told us that here in Wels there aren't that many times during the year when a lot of people go out in the city, but Fasching is one of them and it was fun to be part of it.