From my balcony's high ground I took aim but before I could get off my shot, the Prussian general from the 30-Years War flung his weapon, a flonz. Bouncing off my forehead, the blood sausage - Karneval's trademark hangover preventative - botched my photo and fell to a mob of laughing clowns. I was flonzed. The grinning general straightened his tunic and rode on behind a giant papier-mâché cannon about to fire off a man who may have been the mythic Baron von Munchhausen.

I'd had fair warning the night before, on the midnight train from Potsdam and Berlin. Sleep was verboten, as the train was crowded with loud clowns drinking heavily. They fell short as night porters.

From my balcony, Cologne was awash in waves of color. An estimated 1,750,000 revelers had turned out for the Rose Monday, or Rosenmontag, parade, most of them dressed like clowns. More than 50 processions over the previous few days had warmed up the city since Weiberfastnact on the preceding Thursday – a women's festival in the old marketplace, where any man foolish enough to venture by wearing a tie found it scissored. Four local Rose Monday parades were also being held in different districts of the city. All over side streets were small gatherings of wild and free-roaming marchers, sometimes just a handful of friends and a bass drum, or fasteleer, until they run into other groups and meld together for awhile, particularly if one of the marchers pulls a small dolly with a keg of the famed local beer, Kolsch. But the parade before me now was huge, float after float, band after band, intense with primary colors.

"Float angels" walk along floats, guarding against revelers falling beneath the wheels, and hundreds of "candy boys" supply reinforcement ammo. Instead of the beads of Mardi Gras, more than 40 tons of candy are thrown to spectators, along with bottles of cologne, bouquets of flowers and other small gifts. Two months of parties and events by more than 100 city carnival societies, a time known as the Fifth Season, had built to this point.

A band of sunflowers.

Actually, many centuries built to this point. Karneval, also known in Cologne as Fastelovend or Fasteleer and elsewhere in Germany as Fasching, has roots to ancient times, for Cologne is an ancient city. The Romans settled there in 38 B.C.E. It was a slow-growing backwater until a locally born noblewoman, Julia Agrippina, daughter of the Roman General Germanicus, married Rome's emperor, Claudius. The marriage was better luck for the hometown than for Claudius, earning the town the name of Colonia Claudia Ara Agrippinensium (Cologne or Koln) and municipal rights as capital of a Roman province in A.D. 50, from which it grew into the largest city north of the Alps and a place of pilgrimage second only to Rome. In the Middle Ages it was of greater importance in European commerce than either London or Paris.

The colliding cultures that evolved Cologne's laid down the roots of Karneval. Echoes of the ancient world include the lingering worship of Dionysus, or Bacchus, rejuvenated by slaves and poor free men, eventually condemned by Rome as a sinister source of vice and revolutionary unrest. Dionysus was not just the god of wine, but of vegetation as a whole, his cult connected to nature's fertility. He was murdered by Titans, but reborn. His worship, back to the days of ancient Greece, generated ecstatic emotional outlet, frenzied revels by women and much early theater. These traditions, celebrating man as a free being without hierarchy, blended easily with the various pagan rites of spring practiced by Germanic tribes. Christians knew a good thing when they saw it and layered on their beliefs. Karneval, or carne vale, comes from Latin, and means "flesh, farewell," as Karneval heralds in the Lenten fast leading in Easter.

Karneval developed traditions that allowed money or food or drink on demand, and permitted beatings if the unruly weren't satisfied. After ample casualties, sometimes fatal, the city fathers got organized and, with the Festival Committee of the Cologne Carnival of 1823, started running the celebration in ways that curbed mayhem. Now the only allowed demand is for a kiss on the cheek, or butzchen.

One parade highlight is the Karneval Princess, always a guy in drag, usually tubby and looking like he's ready to close out a Wagner opera. Other traditional figures include the Triumvirate of the prince "His Madnessty," the peasant "His Heftiness" and the virgin "Her Loveliness," all honorary roles played by men, 18th century equal rights being what they weren't. The Third Reich couldn't take a joke, and in the years just before WWII had a woman play the virgin. Although males immediately retrieved the virgin role after the war, the Reich's one worthwhile contribution to culture is that Karneval's tanzmariechen, or chorus girls, previously played by men until 1936, are now played by women.

Revelers pass the Kohl Cathedral.

Floats with political themes abound. One parade, held a month after Monica stepped into limelight, included a crowd pleasing send-up of D.C.'s sitcom with President Clinton closing in on a peeved Statue of Liberty, flanked by an impressive band dressed as chickens and roosters. A giant papiér-mâché depiction of German politicians dressed as boxers had one chewing his opponent's ear a la Mike Tyson. At the end of the parade, a marvel of German engineering passes, its machinery sucking up any lingering debris along the route. Except for the crowds of clowns drifting off singing Karneval songs, no trace of the parade is left.

At midnight on Fat Tuesday, crowds gather in the university sector to burn the Karneval spirit in effigy, sending with the flaming dummies all their worries and woes, knowing an unburdened Karneval spirit will return next year. In similar fashion, straw dolls are burned or buried all over town as scapegoats for Fifth Season transgressions. Ash Wednesday begins the reflective period leading to Easter. Walking the quiet city that day, it's as if someone from the Twilight Zone flipped a switch.

Beyond its Roman Catholic personality, the theme of rebirth runs heavily through Cologne. The top city of the Rhineland before WWII, it was so decimated by bombing that the Allies counseled Cologne's inhabitants to abandon the landscape of rubble and rebuild elsewhere. But the city was rebuilt on its original site, and as the rubble was cleared a treasure-trove of Roman culture was revealed. Some discoveries are on view in the Romish-Germanisches Museum, (Roman-Germanic Museum), including an elaborate mosaic depicting Dionysus, more than a hundred yards square, filled with tiny tiles, once the floor of a 3rd century A.D. Roman villa. Beneath the medieval City Hall, the seat of the Roman governor was found, and one can visit those ruins in the rebuilt building's basement. The main artery of a giant pedestrian shopping zone, Hohe Strasse, is part of the old Roman High Road.

Though the newer architecture is impressively designed, much of the immediate rebuilding was understandably hurried. However, great care was taken rebuilding of 12 Romanesque churches, originally built from the 4th to 13th centuries within the medieval city wall. Their reconstruction is a marvel. Representative façades of Old Town dwellings and shops face the river. Closed to traffic, they provide a semblance of earlier days.

About the only building that wasn't destroyed in WWII is the gothic masterpiece, the Kolner Dom. It persevered due to cultural deference, and for its role as an excellent gun sight for Allied bombers. The largest gothic cathedral in Germany, almost devoid of horizontal lines, this reach toward heaven was begun in 1248. It was completed 632 years later, in 1880. Despite a three-century work break, it remained true to original plans. When finished, the two west towers, 515 feet high, were far and away the highest structures in the world. Trek 509 steps to an observation deck, passing the largest of seven bells, the 24-ton swinging St. Peter's Bell.

The cathedral was built to house a magnificent shrine for relics of the Magi, the three kings who paid homage to the infant Jesus, and to accommodate the huge pilgrimages the relics brought. Whether or not the bones came from one of the holy hoaxes common in the Middle Ages, the structure built for them leaves one in awe. Inside by day, with light streaming through acres of stain glass, or outside at night, the Dom is stunning testament to taking the long view and remaining true to a vision. The cathedral provides a fine backdrop for the Rose Monday parade, which invariably includes a float with its own Dom.

Happy go lucky and festive as Cologne can be, it shares Germany's dark history, as well, evidenced by the Gestapo House museum, known as the El-De-Haus, which concealed its horrors of intimidation, death and betrayal of neighbors. An early '30s Karneval photo of men in a wagon dressed as orthodox Jews, with a sign saying "The Last to Go," is a chilling predictor of things to come.

After viewing this history, it is a comfort to step outside to Cologne's contemporary cultural diversity, with its well-represented international base, lending legitimacy to Karneval's tolerance dictum, "Jede Jeck es anders." or "every reveler's different."

Tina Turner's choice of Cologne as her second home reflects the range of the city's cultural strengths, as do annual events such as the world's largest music trade fair, POPKOMM. Cologne's internationalism includes ample interplay with Americana, such as the continuing performance of the stage version of "Saturday Night Fever" at the huge Musical Dome Cologne.

Adding to the cultural mix are 30 diverse museums and more than 130 art galleries; state-of-the-art facilities for music, opera, theater and a wide range of sports; Germany's largest university, more public houses per capita than any other German city, and top-drawer restaurants that present German cuisine in its best light. Some dishes, like the flonz, are best served in total darkness. But I'll happily reprise meals of sauerkraut, bratwurst, savoy cabbage, dumplings, hearty soups, apple puree, potato salad, sauerbraten and the other fare, washed down with Kolsch.

The business base of Germany's fourth largest city ranges from the scented water eau de cologne, made in Cologne since the early 1700's, to status as the top media center in Germany. Cologne is the number one trade fair location for 25 industries. It's massive trade fair grounds, located across from the Kolner Dom by the Rhine River, present more than 38,000 exhibitors to over two million shoppers from 170 countries. More than 90% of exportable global production is represented at the fairs, with half the exhibitors and a third of the visitors from abroad, including Europe's eastern countries.

If you take in Karneval, be mindful of the saying "every fool thinks his cap looks the best," be prepared for the tradition of free-roaming kissers and arm yourself with a flonz so you can fling it without mercy at a Prussian general before he nails you.

Cologne's tourism office, as well as upcoming events and hotel information, can be accessed by clicking: www.koeln.de.