February 22, 2004
Mardi Gras
Getting ready for work this morning, I was standing in my closet (a large walk-in closet, practically a dressing room) putting on my suit when my teenaged daughter walked in. Her hair was blue. She was wearing a pirate-type shirt.
"I see you're going as a penguin," she said.
It's Fasching Dienstag, the last day of the Carneval season.
At about 80% Roman Catholic, Austria still takes its Church holidays seriously, and Lent starts tomorrow. Today is the climax, and the end, of the season of parties and balls. Today, and throughout Carneval, is the time children (and adults) here wear costumes, (although Halloween is gaining acceptance of late).
My youngest daughter, who attends first grade and has inherited my organizational talents, wasn't sure whether she was supposed to wear a costume to school today, so I had to dress her in normal clothes and pack a costume just in case. At school we determined that, yes, everyone else was in a costume, so she put hers on (she's a cowboy) while I ran home and found some slippers for her (no street shoes allowed in the school) as she had lost hers for the tenth time. Luckily we live across the street from the school. This also comes in handy in the afternoons when she remembers she forgot her homework.
Dropping the other daughter off at the train station, I noticed that there too, most people - especially kids, but adults too, were in costume of some sort. Today is the last day to eat Krapfen, which are donuts filled with apricot marmelade. It is the last day to attend wild costume parties with drinking and eating and sexual license (if yours hasn't expired).
Unless you're lucky enough to work at an office that lets you dress as a penguin year-round.
Tomorrow, people will eat the traditional herring buffet, said to be good for hangovers, and put their costumes back in mothballs in the attic.
- [Note: this was originally posted on 24 February 2004. I changed the date to 22 February so it would appear below Francis' far more interesting post about translation.]