Carnival celebrations in Germany reached their climax on Rose Monday, marking the second-to-last day before the commencement of the Christian Lent fasting season on Ash Wednesday, giving Germans the opportunity to revel, throw themselves in the crowd and go with the flow.
This year, the floats alluded to recent political events, and featured Merkel the Cyclops, Obama the Duck, Putinator, and the all-seeing Eye of Google and Facebook, among others.
German revelers filled the streets of the German cities of Cologne, Dusseldorf, Mainz, Munster and Berlin for colorful Rose Monday Carnival celebrations.
The cities celebrated the last days before the upcoming forty days of Lent, which commence on Ash Wednesday; this year it falls on February 18.
The German name for the day, Rosen Montag, or "Roses Monday," is a mispronunciationof the original name Rasen Montag, meaning "rushing Monday" or "live-it-up Monday." Other places around the world, such as Rio de Janeiro and New Orleans, hold their carnival celebrations on Mardi Gras ("Fat Tuesday").
The name of Ash Wednesday is derived from the tradition of placing ashes on the foreheads of the faithful to remind them of death and the sorrow they are supposed to feel for their sins and the necessity for repentance.
The final blow-out before the season of fasting and introspection is usually marked with colorful floats and brightly-dressed revelers marching through the city.
This year, one float in Cologne featured a clown watering a pencil as a symbol of the "freedom of fools" amid a forest of pencil stubs, a reference to last month's attack on the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo.
One float in Dusseldorf depicted German Chancellor Angela Merkel as a mythical Cyclops being attacked by Greece's new prime minister, who opposes her austerity-heavy approach to Europe's debt crisis.
Another one caricatured President Barack Obama as a lame duck.
But as it turned out, such an event would be incomplete without Russia's President Vladimir Putin. And this time he arrived as ‘Putinator’.
