The Carnival night owls take over the Rhineland for one day, dancing, drinking and kissing

Cologne, Germany (AP) – On Thursday at 11:11 a.m., hundreds of thousands of carnival Night owls took over the streets of the Rhineland in West Germany, danced, sing, drink and showed their colorful costumes.

In many places, women stormed town halls and symbolically took power for one day – which is why the Fat Thursday by Carnival in this region is traditionally called women's fastnacht or the carnival of women.

According to another tradition, men get a kiss if they allow women to cut their ties or laces. On this day, kisses are exchanged not only among partners, but also strangers.

In cities such as Cologne, Düsseldorf, Bonn and Mainz, carnivalists – as the night owls in German are called – confetti threw, roasted with beer and fluctuates on the streets. In addition to the typical German brass band music, the sound of Samba was also in the air.

Bakeries sell large quantities of Jelly-Donut during the Carnival season of the so-called fifth season of the annual, which lasts from fat Thursday to Wednesday before Lent in the traditional Roman-Catholic Rhineland.

Throughout the region, the police increased their presence after a recent series of recently from Letters And Other attacks.

The Interior Minister Herbert Reul said that 9,900 police officers in the state of North Hein-Westphalia in the Service Service more than on a regular Thursday, reported the German news agency dpa.

Despite the recent attacks that many have frightened in Germany, the mayor of Cologne Henriette Reker asked the night owls without celebrating fear.

“Nobody will be able to intimidate us in Cologne,” she said. “We will not allow terrorists or Islamists to take our zest for life away.”

Reker himself was stabbed And critically injured by a right -wing extremist in October 2015, while he was committed to the mayor's office. The next day she was elected in the induced coma and was his office about a month later.