Basler Fasnacht - The Rest

Since it has taken me a couple of weeks to post just our first day in Basel, I am now massively behind in my blogging so I will cut to the chase in this post.

Due to the cumulative effect of our our pre-dawn adventures in the town and the red wine at dinner the night before, Monday got off to a slow start. We had a late breakfast with our generous hosts and then took our little car to the hostel where we were going to spend the second night.

We took some time to wander through the town where the pace had picked up from the night before and the orderly marching was replaced by a rowdy procession with band music and confetti, sweets and, for some reason, oranges being thrown around.

We got ourselves nicely lost a few times but the old town of Basel is quite small anyway it is fun to get lost sometimes.

In the evening we went out with Linda's friends to an Italian restaurant in a very nice part of Basel they are thinking of moving to, filled with tudor-style houses. By the time we got back to the hostel we were well and truly ready for bed. There were a few tense moments while a family with small children turned up in the room next door but fortunately the noise levels dropped quickly and we dropped off to sleep.

The next day was a bit more of the same, only more so because more shops and sights were open (Monday was a public holiday). We did some more walking about the town watching the antics of the processions (amazing they can keep it up for days on end) and visited the Munster cathedral, where we climbed up the tower to look down on the city and the lanterns that had lit up the town on Monday morning.

Eventually it was time to go, and we made our way back to our car past still more masked revelers.

We took a slower road home, via Solothurn, which is a very nice little town with some good chocolate (as though there is a shortage of good chocolate in Switzerland).

On reflecting on the time, I guess I was surprised that the celebrations were so relentless, but also impenetrable as the masks and the language barrier kept you away from understanding the event or the people. It was a spectacle, to be sure, but next year I think we may travel to Lucerne where their celebrations have more of a reputation for inclusiveness.

Lots more of my photos from Basel can be found here.

Basler Fasnacht - Morgestraich

Basel celebrates its Carnival, called the Basler Fashnacht in German, one week after everyone else, possibly to differentiate itself from the Catholic carnival celebrations elsewhere. Basel would be our furthest trip within Switzerland, and we hired a car so we could see some of the countryside as we traveled North from Lac Léman.

Switzerland isn't a very big country, and it only took us about three hours of driving to get from Vevey to Basel, stopping on the way at Augusta Raurica, a Roman settlement that is the oldest in Switzerland. Having already been to Pompeii and Herculaneum in Italy, however, it was difficult to get too excited about the ruins at Augusta Raurica.

After stopping to see the Action Painting exhibition at the Fondation Beyeler Riehen, we continued up to Basel and parked our little fortwo Smart car near the gates of the old town and wandered in on foot. There was already groups of masked people marching through town, playing piccolos and carrying the covered lanterns that would be lit up at 4am the next morning for Morgestraich (an essential part of the festival) .

Linda has a friend in Basel, with whom she had worked before, and we met up with them for a delicious dinner and generous helpings of red wine. We went to bed completely stuffed and perhaps a little drunk. When we woke up at 3:30am the next morning to walk into town and see the lanterns we may even have still been a little tipsy as we didn't feel as cold as you might expect at 4am in the middle of winter in Switzerland.

The town was completely packed with people, both masked and unmasked, and at 4am precisely the lights in town went out, the lanterns turned on, and the music started playing. It was a complete crush of people and it took us forever to push our way down through the narrow streets to the town square. It was amazing the lantern carriers and their escorts were able to make any headway themselves and there was a fair amount of shoving involved in their progress.

In 2002 the Basler Stadtwerke turned the streetlights off too early at
03:59am. Nonetheless Fasnacht went on until Thursday 4:00am. Therefore the 2002 Fasnacht lasted 1 minute longer that usual.

With the dark and the crowds it wasn't until the following days when we saw the lanterns all lined up that we got an appreciation for the scale of the event.

After about an hour and a half of this we decided it was time to call it a night. I think it is accurate to say the Morgestraich is something you really have to do if you come to the Basler Fasnacht, but probably just the once.

Spring comes Early to Vevey

On Saturday we took advantage of the sunny weather to take a walk through the area around Vevey.

This was not only because of the weather, but also because we had begun to feel like we had neglected our 'home town' in our determination to see Switzerland and surrounding countries.

We walked West from Vevey to Corseaux where we found a really nice little beach. We stayed there a while sitting in the sun, and it was even warm enough for me to take off my jumper!

It was nice to take a break from our usual hectic routine, and although we may complain that there isn't as much snow as expected, it's hard to moan about a nice sunny day at the beach!