>So that’s where they all were – watching the Guggenmusik bands.

Guggenmusik originally came – as most good things do… – from the pagan ritual of blowing cows’ horns to drive out the evil spirits of winter.

All for that, for sure.

It developed – over a couple of centuries – into a loosely organised excuse to have a good time and it’s only in the last century that it’s sort of merged with Carneval.

It started out in Switzerland and is pretty much regionally localised to Austria, Italy, Switzerland and Southern Germany.

There must have been 30 or so groups of wildly dressed and masked people, cruising the boulevards with a riotous rhythm section and brass instruments.

I must be developing a chromosome mutation.

I could get used to this…

31 Jan This entry was published on 31 January, 2008 at 15:38 and is filed under Culture, Mainz. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post.