Carnival in Austria!

Carnival in Austria has a long tradition. It probably is older than the Carnival in Rio, and certainly is as old as that celebrated in Venice (with the traditional beautiful masks and costumes). No one really knows the roots of the traditions, but we would like to provide you with some fun impressions and recent explanations.

All over Austria (and the world) folks celebrate Carnival, especially in Catholic dominated countries. It begins a few days before Lent, and is the last hurrah before fasting and abstinence kicks in. In our region of the Traunsee, Carnival lasts four days, and one really needs to have a lot of stamina to survive. Each region has their own traditions. Some say it began with the wealthy people and the traditional Ball seaons, such as the Opernball in Vienna, and the many other Balls given at this time. Some say, that in response to this, the people in the agricultural regions of Austria developed their own Balls and Parades. Dressing up in costume. Some of these costumes mimick famous townspeople, making fun of them, and often in earlier years the carnival antics would put fear in those more well-established citizens!

Although it depends on your group of friends where you end up going on the various days, there are particular highlights that occur every year.

Carnival is called "Fasching" in Austria, and a Parade is called a "train" in German, "Zug". The Viechtau is a valley that runs east and west into the Traunsee, and the villages of Neukirchen (New Church!), Reindlmühl and parts of Altmünster and Traunkirchen belong to this valley. The villages have Carnival committees that participate in building floats for the parade with various themes. This year, one particular carnival committee made itself famous this summer at a Speed Boat race on the Traunsee lake. The Reindlmühl committee pretended to be an Arabian Prince (Sheik) and his enterage including body guards, that happened to have a boat entered in the race. The Austrian television folks at the ORF bought it all up, and tried like crazy to interview the Prince. Only at the end was the gag given away, and the carnival committee was made nationally famous by the mistake of the television newscasters!

This is the type of humor surrounding carnival gags. We happened to be present at this years parade to see the Sheik and all our friends taking part. The parade itself has an interesting history. This year it celebrates its 30th year. It actually started earlier, however, was forbidden during the German take over of Austria in the 1930's. Despite it's forbidden status, a small group of Neukirchen citizens made themselves heros by defying the rules, and in 1938, Wirts Franz senior and Johann Karobath organized a parade by telling everyone they had received permission to hold a parade. People came from miles around to watch, and wonder why their town was not allowed, but Neukirchen was!? The parade was held and the police did not interfere, however following the parade the citizens of the organizing committee were arrested and held in prison for three days. After this, it took until 1974 before another parade in Neukirchen was organized for Carnival. We would like to congratulate our Neukirchen friends on their 30th year celebration.

Some images of Viechtauer Faschingzug (the Viechtauer Parade):

After the parade, it is a traditional visit to the pub. The next day there are several Balls held, such as that the women have in Neukirchen called the "Wives Ball" (all the men stay away from this Ball saying they have no business there!) On Monday night some folks head to Ebensee, a town at the end of the Traunsee lake, for the Fetzenzug. Fetzen are "rags" and the tradition in Ebensee is to dress up in costumes of rags. It is said that in 1800s this parade was done during the Ball season by the peasants and actually used to terrify the wealthy. We have a link to a website to show how some of the masks and colorful rag costumes look. Here folks stay up all night going from pub to pub or beer tent to beer tent. Afterwards, one returns to Neukirchen or Altmünster to visit the shops and homes of local people, going from house to house or shop to shop. Of course there is quite a lot of schapps, beer and cocktails involved in all this. Today, at the end of the afternoon folks will be meeting up at the local ski-lift for the final party.

Ebenseer Faschingzug (Rags Parade) images!