{"id":344055,"date":"2025-08-14T14:21:10","date_gmt":"2025-08-14T14:21:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/344055\/"},"modified":"2025-08-14T14:21:10","modified_gmt":"2025-08-14T14:21:10","slug":"the-colourful-civic-groups-that-hold-germany-together","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/344055\/","title":{"rendered":"The colourful civic groups that hold Germany together"},"content":{"rendered":"<p data-component=\"paragraph\" class=\"css-1l5amll e1y9q0ei0\">TUCKED away in the car park of a drinks warehouse, hundreds of men in green jackets and feathered caps, plus a handful of women, are swapping gossip and glugging beer. Suddenly comes the call: \u201cSch\u00fctzenbr\u00fcder antreten!\u201d (marksmen line up), and the men fall into columns as a brass band strikes up. They begin a good-natured, not especially disciplined parade up the streets of Arnsberg, a small town in Germany\u2019s Sauerland region, hollering \u201cHorrido!\u201d, an old hunting cry, to well-wishers. Soon they arrive at a large tent where, after a Catholic mass, the festivities begin: speeches, dancing and a lot of beer. Later that evening\u2014having been forced to learn, somewhat against his will, a dance called the \u201cdiscofox\u201d\u2014your correspondent takes his leave as a conga line begins.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"TUCKED away in the car park of a drinks warehouse, hundreds of men in green jackets and feathered&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":344056,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5310],"tags":[2000,299,1824,26],"class_list":{"0":"post-344055","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-germany","8":"tag-eu","9":"tag-europe","10":"tag-germany","11":"tag-world"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115027567222769000","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/344055","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=344055"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/344055\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/344056"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=344055"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=344055"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=344055"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}