Chapter 71 - Fasching

After taking a break to get over a bad cold, then two weeks to enjoy the Winter Olympics, I thought I should probably do a blog.

They celebrated Fasching over here recently. Fasching means Carnival or "go crazy for four days before Ash Wednesday." It's celebrated in many Roman Catholic areas of Europe and is called Fasching in southern and eastern Germany, Switzerland and Austria. For a few weeks before Fasching sections in stores are set aside for costumes, like Halloween in America. But over here people get to dress up twice each year.

Klingenbach may be a small village, but they go all out every year for Fasching. They discontinued their village parade about 15 years ago, but the partying is still in full force. I thought Texans knew how to party, but these Austrians have partying down to an art form!

Here in Klingenbach it all begins with the Fasching Balls. There are three of them, one sponsored by the Fire Brigade and held at Ivanschitz Restaurant, a second sponsored by the Social Democratic or Red Party, also held at Ivanschitz, and the third, sponsored by the Christian Democrats or Black Party, held at Gregorits Restaurant. It would be like if the Democrats and Republicans did things like that in small towns in the U.S.

We were invited by Kreso to attend the Ball held at Gregorits on Saturday evening. Like all the new experiences we've had here, it was interesting.

At each ball young people are presented to the community, much like debutantes in America. The presentees are members of the youth clubs of each political party, and at the Fire Brigade Ball, they are a mix of the two youth clubs. They are normally in their late teens when they do this, and they can do it more than once if they choose. There is a very formal procedure that must be followed in which the boy must present a corsage to the girl's mother and ask permission of her father.

At the Black Party Ball there were eight girls and eight boys. Here they are waiting to be presented.


Being formally presented. Someone was talking for a long time on the microphone while this was going on, but we didn't understand any of it.


They promenade back and forth in opposite lines.


Then they dance an intricate Polonaise they had obviously carefully practiced. The boys looked embarrassed, but some of the girls were quite good.


The kids dance a formal waltz with each other, then the girls dance with their fathers and boys with their moms. The music was traditional Viennese waltz music.

After the kids finished their official dances, they raced into the bar - the drinking age in Austria is 16 for beer and wine (18 for the hard stuff). We shortly heard a rising crescendo of what was obviously a good time. The kids later danced some, and we saw one who had changed into her waitress uniform serving the adult guests. A small band played a variety of modern music, mostly fast music but enough slow tunes to get Bob out of his chair.

Here are the old folks from Texas at the Ball!


On Sunday afternoon at the community center at least half the town attended the community talent show. In the afternoon kids put on acts (primarily lip synching to largely American hit tunes), and in the evening adults performed. There was lots of food to be had, enough alcohol to float the place of course and a haze of smoke guaranteed to choke non-participants. We saw some of the afternoon performance but left before the adults took the stage.

Here are pics of some of the children's acts. Aren't they cute?












On Monday evening the biggest blow-out was held downstairs in Burschi's Bonanza Bar. Called the LuftBalloon (air balloon) Party, several hundred costumed were expected. The entrance to the Bonanza Bar is one floor down from Burschi's restaurant (we live above that) and laid out perpendicular to us in a renovated bowling alley so we don't hear anything from the parties. Before the party Thomas (DJ and Burschi's son) and 10 friends spent a few hours blowing up 3,000 balloons. I went down in the afternoon to see that!

Burschi showed me the balloons and told me that before the night was over, they'd all be popped.








We went down to the party and had a drink. It was fun watching the people in some really crazy costumes. This is Thomas and Tina. The pictures in this section are from ANS New Media (www.ans-newmedia.com).


Bob and me with a bubble-wrapped Ljuba


Here's a sampling of some of the costumes.











This party went on until dawn.

On Tuesday afternoon there was one more festivity for Fasching - a party for the village children, again held at Burschi's Bonanza Bar. A couple of hundred children gathered for a costume party. Here are a few snaps.








So on Ash Wednesday the village was really quiet as everyone recovered from Fasching, and we assume that it will continue to be fairly quiet during Lent. We hear, however, that at Easter the village goes crazy again!