At 11 minutes past 11AM on the 11th day of the 11th month the Carnival season 2006 in Cologne officially started. I suspect if raised in Cologne one never forgets this.

The biggest and zaniest Rhine Karneval and for that matter, in all of Europe, is held in Köln (Cologne), Germany’s oldest city where the Karneval is annually synthesized into a vivacious work of art.

The first written record of the Köln carnival is from the year 1341.

Thanks for the link Y. And, by the way, I am told there once used to be a big bump in the birth rate in Cologne nine months after Carnival…