Photo Gallery Cologne Karneval Kicks Off
Each year Cologne Karneval kicks off on women's day. Here a group of women dressed up as clowns celebrate the start of carnival season on Thursday.
The Rose Monday parade is one of the biggest highlights of the carnival. The floats taking part in the parade were revealed on Wednesday.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel will make an appearance in Monday's parade as well -- in a bathing suit.
But it's not just German politicians who get the Karneval treatment. Here, French presidential candidates Segolene Royal and Nikolas Sarkozy square off in a cock -- or is that a coq? -- fight.
At Karneval, anything goes. Including this impromptu performance by a group of Scots on Thursday.
Russian President Vladimir Putin as oil engineer. Putin has been a favorite satire victim in Cologne in recent years.
In other news .... Retired German Formula 1 driver Michael Schumacher lounging around in the sun after stepping out of the racing circuit earlier this year.
More sports showing cycling doping champions Floyd Landis, who was stripped of the Tour de France championship after it was discovered he had taken performance enhancing drugs, and German cyclist Jan Ullrich, likewise a doping perpetrator.
Germany's precarious governing coalition pairing the country's two biggest parties has come in for some heat on the editorial pages lately. Never ones to pass up a good opportunity when they see one, Cologne float makers here depict Merkel as a squirrel and her vice chancellor Franz Müntefering as an acorn.
And what do those visiting Karneval dress up as? Everything imaginable.
