When hundreds of pale people with bloodshot eyes and shredded clothes shuffle through the city of Frankfurt grunting, they are not people who celebrated a bit too hard and too long at the Museumsuferfest, but the participants of the increasingly popular Zombie Walk.
The Frankfurt Zombie Walk was launched in 2007 after the initiators had seen videos of similar actions from Canada on the net. Whether a large community could be found in Germany for such an event and how this would go down with the unsuspecting passers-by, was of course not foreseeable at that time. But after the first Zombie Walk a few days before Halloween, when almost 200 hobby zombies got together and the response was positive throughout, it was quickly decided to turn the Walk into an annual event.
It is absolutely amazing what talent and creativity the participants show. Here you can discover many an outfit and make-up that can easily exist alongside the work of professional make-up and costume designers. The consistently peaceful atmosphere is also inspiring, and despite the extreme morbidity of the event, it radiates a great deal of cheerfulness. When the zombies gather in front of the Walk on the forecourt of Frankfurt's main train station, you can also observe that older people in particular are infected by this positive atmosphere and that many travellers take more photos here than of many other sights in Frankfurt.
In 2015, the Zombie Walk was again a complete success. With infinite effort, love for the bloody detail and obvious joy, these undead have proven that zombies can also radiate great joie de vivre and an enormous sense of community. And even if some of them look really terrible, you don't have to be afraid of these zombies - they just want to play!
(Text by Sebastian Betzold)
