Ghostbusters

Time for a bit of culture. We're staying in Konigssee, Germany at the moment doing a bit of training and a competition. Around here they have a traditional festival take place on the 5th and 6th of December. I'm not too clear on what the origins are but Im going to take a wild, random stab in the dark and guess that its pagan. It's called something like Putenmalenlaufen and only happens here, although i suspect there are similar variations that take place around Europe.

The idea goes that during winter there arelots of evil spirits wandering about doing whatever it is that evil spirits do: giving people colds, making radio stations incessantly play every jingle-bell-ridden song they can get their sweaty hands on as soon as the clock ticks past midnight to the first of December. All reasonably explained as the doings of evil spirits. Coming up to Christmas people got into the "quick, Jesus is coming, everyone look busy" mood and decided to get rid of the evil spirits in a rather novel way. Ghostbusters hadn't been invented yet but that didn't stop those wily pagans.

Apparently evil spirits aren't very bright. If you dress up as a scary demon and make lots of noise the evil spirits get scared and run away. So what happens is you get several groups of about twenty people going around the town driving out the evil spirits. For several hours, starting around nine pm, these groups make circuits throughout the town centre as everyone comes out to watch and drink hot gluhwein. The group makes lots of noise shouting and ringing bells and rattling pots. As they go along they whip various bystanders to drive out the spirits. In doing so they also make you more fertile too.

There are two main types in the group. The central body is made up of guys wearing big costumes made out of straw with large bells attached to them. Floating around these guys are others dressed up with furs and wearing smaller bells. All of them are masked and all of them are carrying an assortment of whips lovingly made out of birch sticks bound together with traditional tennis racquet handle tape.



Normally you may think of Germans as reserved, efficient well-behaved people. But that's not the case during Putenmalenlaufen. These guys really get into it and I suspect large quantites of gluhwein help out here, along with the anonymity of a mask. They will go into restaurants and whip people as they dine. They'll grab girls, and smear black grease on their faces. After a while they'll take a break in some bar at a corner of the town, top themselves up with more booze and do it all again. They don't whip gently either.

While we were standing near the market square a group came by. Two of them made a bee-line straight for me and proceeded to drive out some evil spirits. I was wearing snow trousers so the first few hits didnt really hurt. My polite, manly stoicism served only to fuel their fervour so they upped their efforts until the whips broke. Fortunately I had positioned myself up against a large pillar which took most of the beating. Either way I feel very angelic and fertile so I guess it worked.