Carnival in Switzerland

CARNAVAL DE GENEVE 2007

It's that time of year again... time for carnival! We decided to stay local this year to see how the Swiss celebrate this wild holiday season and I have to say, we weren’t disappointed! The festivities started the day after Ash Wednesday. On Saturday we braved the rain and watched the Carnival De Genève parade that winded it's way through town. But the big event was yet to come...

BASEL CARNAVAL 2007

On Sunday night at about 9:00 we met up with some other GoLers and caught the train to the Swiss German city of Basel, home of the biggest carnival in Switzerland - The Basler Fasnacht. We arrived around midnight, got a bite to eat, had a few drinks, and boogied down at a local disco waiting for the festivities to begin.

We made our way to the center of town with thousands of other spectators, and at exactly 4am the whole city went dark. Soon the town was filled with the sound of piccolo flutes and basler drums. It was coming from the parade that was made up of over 18,000 participants! All of which were wearing colorful costumes, crazy masks, and lanterns on their heads. In addition to playing music, some Fasnächtlers (the folks in the parade) were carrying lanterns on poles or pulling big, brightly illuminated lanterns, called Zugslaterne, which are pulled by several people.

The craziest thing was, this giant parade (made up of formations of a couple hundred people called Cliques) did not follow a fixed route, and the marchers were coming from all different directions. If one Clique crossed the route of another Clique, one will stop and let the other group pass. Spectators on the other hand are politely guided off the route by the Vortrab (or the leader of the Clique). It was a wonderful chaos!

We were there for almost two hours and when we left, it was still going strong! We stopped in a restaurant for some flour soup and onion pastry that is traditionally eaten after the parade. The Basler Fasnacht lasts for 72 hours. We weren’t going to stay quite that long... we were soon on a train back to Geneva, full of sleepy people. We were all tired, but the loss of a little shut eye was worth being a part of this amazing festival!