Hundreds of thousands of revellers have taken to the streets across Germany to celebrate Carnival – dressed up in colourful costumes amid an abundance of sweets, flowers and alcohol.
Popular street parades in traditional Carnival strongholds such as Duesseldorf, Cologne and Mainz in the Rhineland drew huge crowds of locals and tourists alike.
Schools remained closed in many regions in the west so children could join the parades.
Many of the processions showcased floats addressing global political topics with biting sarcasm.
In Duesseldorf, one float called Free Iran was themed with a small cleric struggling to free himself from the black, free-flowing long hair of a gigantic woman’s head.
Another float depicted an oversized, naked Russian President Vladimir Putin taking a “blood bath” in a tub painted in the yellow and blue colours of Ukraine.
In Cologne’s Shrove Monday procession, a float showed Mr Putin in vampire attire kissing the devil and putting the world through a meat grinder, the German news agency dpa reported.
Thousands lined the streets as the parades slowly made their ways through the cities.
Onlookers cheered as traditional bands played familiar tunes, dancers in glitzy costumes marched along and Carnival princes and princesses on top of the floats threw down sweets and flowers.
In the eastern German city of Halle, a street parade was cancelled early after a woman was hurt in an accident, dpa reported.
