Fasnet, otherwise known as Fastnacht

Donuts lined up for Fasching customers.

We have entered the season of Fasching in Southern Germany and Austria. The rest of Germany calls this holiday Karneval, which also coincides with Mardi Gras in New Orleans and with Carnaval in Brazil. All of these traditions celebrate the time before Lent, which is when Christians begin the 40-day fasting period leading up to Easter. (Remember: Southern Germany is a deeply Catholic part of the country.)

This coming Tuesday, February 12, is Shrove Tuesday, more commonly known as Fastnacht, or the night before the fasting begins. (Nacht is "night" in Germany and fast is the root of the verb fasten, meaning "to fast.") Originally, this was the night when people ate donuts and celebrated with a feast, knowing that they would be fasting for the next 40 days. Nowadays, at least in Southern Germany, Fasching has become a weeklong event and the donuts appear in bakeries on Thursday or Friday of the preceding week. If you're lucky, they also appear at work. Case in point: on Friday, my group leader at work sent one of our student helpers to buy the special Fastnacht donuts, Berliner. These donuts tasted just like any jelly or cream donuts you would get in the U.S. (Berliner don't have the hole in the center.) The only difference is that they were extremely fresh, as if they had just come out of the fryer, which they probably did. My only complaint about these donuts is that they were also very sweet. However, on Saturday, I had a different kind of donut, which resembled more of an oversized Munchkin (essentially the hole of the donut, for you non-U.S. readers). It was called a Quarkbällchen. Bällchen refers to a "small ball" and quark is a type of cheese that we don't have in the U.S. It is similar to the cheese in cheesecake, but not quite as rich. I don't like quark by itself, but it's great in baked goods. The Quarkbällchen was made of plain dough on the outside, filled with dough mixed with quark on the inside, and dusted with sugar on the outside. It definitely won my donut taste test.

Another benefit to the Fasching season is that some of the days are public holidays. Tuesday, for instance, is a half-day at work, so that people can properly celebrate Tuesday afternoon. I'm going to try to go to one of the parades in the city. If I do, I'll definitely take some pictures!