Too many Parades

The girls watching the end of a mystery parade last Sunday.

We live at the end of the main street in our town. This is pretty awesome because it means that every time there is a parade, it goes right by our house. Our town has parades all the time and, since we are not well versed in all the local small holidays, they are generally surprise parades for us.

There is very little as charming as having a normal humdrum day, and then suddenly hearing a cheery tune slowly grow louder. We always rush to the windows and watch them to the very end. (Our town's pretty small so the parades don't tend to be very long.)

We used to open the windows and wave and cheer but we stopped doing that after one rather somber parade passed us and I realized hat it was not a parade at all, but actually march from the Catholic church to the cemetery. Funeral processions are kind of like parades, but you aren't supposed to cheer or throw confettin. Yeah, not our finest moment.

But we still watch every parade we can. Sometimes they sing, sometimes they chant, sometimes they ring bells and bang drums. Sometimes they wear current military uniforms, sometime ancient military uniforms, usually there are some dirndles and ledehosen involved. It's always awesome and always just under our noses. Hooray for Germany.