BERLIN (AP) – Revelers have filled the streets in western Germany for annual carnival parades, complete with floats that allude to recent terrorist attacks and the showdown over Greece’s debt.
Colorfully dressed revelers turned out in Cologne, Duesseldorf and Mainz for Germany’s best-known carnival parades Monday, a day after local officials canceled a parade in the northern city of Braunschweig due to fears of an Islamic extremist attack.
In Cologne, one float showed a clown watering a pencil as a symbol of “freedom of fools” amid a forest of pencil stumps, a reference to last month’s attack on French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo.
A float in Duesseldorf depicted German Chancellor Angela Merkel as a mythical Cyclops being attacked by Greece’s new prime minister, who opposes her austerity-heavy approach to Europe’s debt crisis.