STORY: You can probably hardly imagine a stronger contrast. While Russia started a war against Ukraine on Thursday night and the western world is stunned, women’s carnival was celebrated in Cologne at 11:11 sharp on the Alter Markt. But the situation in Ukraine is also an issue here: O-TON KARNEVALIST, JÖRG BURKHARD: “Last night, when I read the announcement that Russia had invaded Ukraine, I was completely speechless. With freedom that has not much to do right now, it’s just so artificial, especially LOL (editor’s note: what is meant is the expression ‘Laugh out loud’) Yes, but of course it’s not fun, you have to say, it’s terrible ‘Cause we don’t know what’s coming and it’s looking really, really bad. So I’m not optimistic. Unfortunately.” O-TON CARNEVALISTIN, STEFFI: “It’s still very fresh, it’s still far away.” O-TON, KARNEVALIST, MARKUS FRANK: “There are mixed feelings. Of course we had to do without everything completely last year, also because of Corona. We simply said, even if the feelings are mixed, we’ll still have to take a look Soak up the mood and then we drive home again. Simply because we want to say, we can party a bit. But we don’t know how it will develop. Everywhere. We just don’t want to do without everything.” The Cologne carnival is also overshadowed by the corona pandemic. Strict conditions apply. The entire urban area was declared a “customs zone”. 2G Plus applies. So you have to be vaccinated twice or recovered and also be able to show a negative test result. These rules apply until Mardi Gras Tuesday.