>Fassenacht has a number of distinct milestones.

There’s Rosenmontag – Rose Monday – of course, which is the culmination of the madness, before everyone settles down for Ash Wednesday, Lent and an extended period of penance.

And then there’s the Thursday before Rosenmontag – Weiberfastnacht. (Wimmin’s Carnival)

Started out in Beuel – now a suburb of Bonn – in the mid-1800s as an attempt by the stroppy wimminfolk of the village to storm the gender barriers and achieve carnivalistic equality.

And spread.

And spread.

It’s developed into an alcohol-fuelled orgy of symbolic emasculation by cutting off men’s neck attire and compensating them with a kiss. Or whatever.

Booze and hormones never being the best of bedfellows (if you’ll forgive the pun…), things tend to get out of hand….

The outfit I worked for had its corporate HQ at one time in Cologne and there used to be a veritable annual pilgrimage from the operational hub in Frankfurt by people who had “urgent business meetings” – nod, nod, wink, wink – to attend on the day.

An appropriate euphemism would be “Succession Management”…

And it really is dangerous to wear a tie on the day. I used to go into Steve Jobs-mode and you’d have to warn visiting customers to wear something ugly and polyester.

You’d think that executive secretaries would show some respect for the CEO of a Key Account customer though.

Think again.

They’re the most rabid of the lot…

02 Feb This entry was published on 2 February, 2008 at 08:24 and is filed under Culture, Mainz. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post.