Fasnacht or Carnival time!

This week was time for attending two masked parades - one in Zurich and one in Basel. These parades were part of the Fasnacht celebrations all over Switzerland. Since the entire thing was new to me, I did some reading up on the internet and got some information from variousother articles and of course good old  Wikipedia.

The German word for carnival is Fasnacht. The carnival is a festive occasion which is primarily celebrated by Roman Catholics in different parts of the world and it takes place just before the start of the sombre Lent period. However, Switzerland does not restrict celebrations specifically to Catholics. Different parts of the country celebrate the festival at different times, starting as early as January and running right through February and March as well. 

The Fasnacht celebrations in Zurich started last Friday evening, 11th March and ended with a big parade on Sunday, 13th March. The parade was on Bahnhoffstrasse, starting from the lake and going up near to the main train station. When we reached, a lot of people had already gathered along with a lot of tiny witches, princesses, a small superman and a super-small frog - the children were dressed in fancy dress. The adults were sporting bright fluorescent hair that were green or pink or any other colour that one could think of with equally bright paints all over their faces and any other visible body part.

The long parade had people all dressed up in various different costumes, masked and made-up to look like witches and different, really scary creatures complete with horns and tails. They were like Halloween costumes but then it was in broad daylight and everyone was having a lot of fun. Each group had different masks and were either part of a band, playing different musical instruments or else throwing paper confetti and candy to the crowd. The idea of the costumes is probably to scare away the evil winter spirits and welcome in the warm summer days.

The Basel one was a much larger celebration. That started early in the morning but we went there in the afternoon. The celebrations there were from 14th March, 4 am to 17th March, 4am. There is a lot more confetti throwing going on there, along with other small gifts as well, like candy, oranges, bananas, small stuffed toys etc. from giant floats moving right through the crowd. The parade is not restricted to a few hours, instead the entire city goes crazy for 72 hours. Besides costumes of witches and ghosts, some of the bands also make political statements and it was also possible to spot the German Chancellor, the French Prime Minister and so on.

So this was a huge change from the normal quiet life that is Zurich or rather Switzerland. A few hours later there was no sign of celebrations anywhere in Zurich. The police had cleared away the crowd and the cleaners had swept the streets clean. Typical Swiss efficiency and life goes on as usual. Till next time, ciao.