Perchtenlauf Festival in Schärding, Austria: A Scary Festival in Beginning of Winter Season

The perchant performance.

One of performance.

On last Friday, my husband and I visited Schärding, a city in Austria. Why must we visit this city? Because we heard announcement many times in radio that winter festival would be held in Schärding. This is not the first time to come over there. You can find also my written post in this blog regarding Schärding.

Read

1. https://liwunfamily.com/2017/11/03/scharding-kota-baroque-bersejarah-di-austria-nan-cantik-1/
2. https://liwunfamily.com/2017/11/06/scharding-kota-tua-di-austria-bergaya-baroque-2/

Schärding is a border city directly located Bavarian, one state of the Federal Republic of Germany. This is beautiful city across river that separates Germany and Austria. This river named as Inn.

A city should become tourism destination, not only pretty but Schärding is old city fully built Baroque building. That is a reason this city called also Baroquestadt in Deutsch word or baroqoue city in English.

So back to the festival. This festival was horribly attractive for tourists and people around as visitors. We came from Germany only to watch the performance of ‘Perchten’ groups. There is more than 16 groups to festive yearly in beginning of winter season in Schärding. 

Over the night, the festival began with ‘Monster’ one by one to perform scary and awful for people around. I called ‘Monster’ because they worn dreadful masks and strange costume.

In according to the legend, perchtenlauf  is a festival to drive away the evils or ghost that aimed to human well-being and convenience during winter season. The perchant groups worn costume and horror masks only to frighten or horrify people around. The most of perchant groups looked scary and spooky then specialized to promote the strange and terrifying situations.

They made people around frightened or afraid.

Kids with one of percant in picture together.

Probably this is folklore or legend, but this festival deserved to watch. For sure, kids can come to make friendly with Perchant Groups. As parents, they can educate children to festive this occasions only for entertainment and fun.

Further more, please find short video in here.

First video

Second video