Good guess Fez, but not the one I'm looking for. The carnival procession is a day time thing and these have never had a place there. The answer i'm looking for is something that had always been present (for several hundred years) but disappeared last year.
Just to rule out a few possibilities: The Cathedral is not cordoned off but urinating against the walls has always been forbidden (as anywhere else). Smoking is allowed (in the open). Wearing a costume which impersonates a police officer has never been allowed. Wearing a full mask which conceals the face is questionable - but not yet banned. Plastic bags are still in use Sale of glass bottles is still allowed. Which leaves........? This is as a result of an incident in 2018 in Appelhofplatz which held up the procession for an hour.
It has to be said that the same ban does not exist in Engelskirchen - last year there were a few of them, but in Cologne they used wooden ones
I have learnt a great deal about the carnival and people around you cologne, but still none the wiser as to what these wooden things are that are used.
Well it has to do with the volume of people Frenchie. Rosenmontag in Cologne has about a million people on the streets whereas Engelskirchen has only a few thousand - so what is safe here isn't in Cologne. There are some things which have always been forbidden such as wearing the costume of a policeman, and also impersonating ethnic minorities - but this was banned for the first time last year as a result of an incident at Appelhofplatz in 2018 where several people were badly injured. They now use wooden ones there - at least for the time being. This breaks a tradition of hundreds of years.
That's the one Frenchie. Until recently there have been about 500 horses pulling carnival floats at the carnival - in 2018 there was an incident in which 3 spooked and bolted injuring several in the crowds - a float actually crushing a woman as a result. There had been minor incidents in the past as well. Theoretically horses would be up to police horse standard (ie. bombproof) but in reality many of them aren't. For many years animal rights groups have questioned the use of horses at such events which are as anarchistic, and loud, as the carnival is and now the authorities have stepped in. So last year they actually used wooden horses as an experiment. Over to you.
Thanks for that. As I said I have learnt a great deal about the carnival and other things in your town. In 1998 Alex Chamberlain and Steve Palmer were at the centre of a very unusual event. What was it?
That's it. Palmer was on the team sheet as the keeper and Chamberlain an out field player. The first throw in they changed to normality. Over to you!
Know your enemy! I own three bibles, a koran and a couple of religious text books. And a book that I would assume is banned in Germany written by some failed Austrian artist...