Jacqui.ch: Carnival in Basel

I thought I had had enough of carnival, but then I heard about the Basel Faschnacht. It begins at 4am on monday morning (aka, Sunday night) on March 5 with a lantern parade. Some friends from work were planning to go (Kathryn, Samuela and her friend Nick), so I decided to come along.

I managed to round up a group from Baden to join in on the fun. Me, Richard, Adrienn, Vance, Tommy, Alain and Victor met at the Berg around midnight on sunday night to prep with some coffee and Bailey's. For those of you keeping track, this was the day after the birthday party (notice Lindsey not joining us in Basel, haha), which was the day after the Concert in Zurich. Needless to say, it was a full and intense weekend, and coffee was muchly required.

We hopped on the train to Zurich, and met up with my work friends, and then got on the 2am train to Basel. We had some beer on the train to keep us energized (lol) and then made our way through the crowded, snowy streets to a good parade watching location.

Right at 4am (gotta love Swiss punctuality!), all the lights went out on the streets, and we heard piccolos and drums off in the distance. Before long the streets were filled with a parade of musicians, all equipped with glowing lanterns on their heads, paper mache masks, and big lantern floats. All the various floats were satire's of current events in Basel....however, since none of us were up on the current events we didn't get the jokes of the parades (plus, most of us couldn’t read French/German). The effect was still beautiful though, the lanterns looked really cool. Something interesting about the parade was that it wasn't one single route...there seemed to be multiple starting points and people marching in streets all around us. It was cool, because the sound of the various drums and flutes all combined together into a neat layered effect.

After the parade had mostly passed us, us Baden folk decided to go to McDonalds to warm up/grab some food (which turned out to be a poor decision...McDonalds is never really a good food choice). We caught a morning train back home, and after a quality hour and a half train sleep I arrived in Zurich to go straight to work. Good times! I'm glad I got to enjoy another Swiss experience. It was a lot different vibe than the carnival in Luzern...not many people dressed up, different music styles, more watching than crazy dancing. I'm happy that I ended up seeing both, as they were totally different styles of carnival!