Carnival

a float[ing boat]. have I no shame?
http://www.spiegel.de/fotostrecke/fotostrecke-65424-8.html

here is a picture of a single woman, celebrations seem similar world wide, except undergarments.

religion, revelry, and a person in a banana suit. i feel this pretty well sums up carnival. it's a religious but quite not all at the same time.
http://www.spiegel.de/fotostrecke/fotostrecke-65424-9.html


As to the cultural aspect of all of this hullabaloo- this mess started as a way to Christianize  various Pagan holidays- roman Saturnalia and Lupercalia, German solstice festivities. my favorite part of Lupercalia is that the young men of the town would run around in a wolf pelt whipping the local ladies with goatskin. the harder you were hit, the more luck of having a boy the following year. Essentially the deal is eat drink and snu-snu as much as possible before it isn't allowed. Every strict society needs something as a release.
These activities seem pretty comparable to the celebrations that happen in New Orleans for Marti Gras. but other than that one local event, there don't seem to be any really big celebrations like in German cities. i have never heard of a Cincinnati Carnival parade, or one in Columbus, or Louisville, etc.
i feel the cultural importance of Carnival is another lovely reason to dance and shed reserve. Germans do seem to love a good occasion to dance. but i do have to say, some of these floats changed my perceptions a bit. some of them are very... wie sagt man...umm... "oh dear god" to my rather risque to my relatively conservative American upbringing.
What might the floats look like later this month? my best guess is a lot of brutal bashing of Greece and Italy. i don't really know what else there would be- maybe something about the articles we read earlier, like the right wing violence.