Saturday, March 1, 2008

Fasnacht - Part Deux


So Sunday night as I am lying on the sofa nursing my cold, I get a text message from my cousin Alex. "Good evening! Are u better? Ready to pick it up again tomorrow at 4:45am?" Well unbeknownst to me, the festivities were about to continue early Monday morning.

So at the ungodly hour of 4:15am I walked down into the old town in my old man costume and met up with a Swiss guard, a alp wanderer and a frog. Me and my three bodyguards walked the town, drank lots of holdrio (to keep warm, of course), tracked down the Vikingers, danced and sang. There was lots of carousing and taking part in the revelry going on that morning.

At about 10am, I excused myself, bought something to eat and headed back up to the house for a nap. After a good sleep, I was told the festivities would continue at around 8pm that night. I looked out the window and saw the dismal weather - rainy and cold. It was too much for me to motivate an appearance so I told my bodyguards to go on without me.

Tuesday afternoon I headed to town in civilian clothing to take some pictures and watch the children's parade and some more bands. The weather was pristine and the crowds were in good form. I got myself some holdrio and meandered through town, getting hit with confetti along the way. I watched the children's parade, where young and old were dressed in fantastic costumes and going through town on floats. By the famous water tower bridge I saw fantastic costumes and a concert by a Swiss band who actually brought their alp horns. Quite an amazing sight with the river, the water tower and the mountains in the background! However my main objective was to hunt down the Vikingers and watch their afternoon performance. After searching them out all through the town I finally found them and watched their sensational performance.

After a while it was time to head back home so I could get into costume again. So once I donned my old man costume I made my way back to town to meet up with my cousin Pia and her daughters Jeaninne and Michele. We watched the Monsterkonzert, which is where all the bands parade through town playing their music. Sort of the big send off for the carnival. After the parade we met up with my cousin Alex, the alp wanderer and the frog again. It basically turned into a family reunion of sorts, where we collectively drank lots of holdrio and stalked the Vikingers the rest of the night. We watched the last Vikinger show at about 2am and I finally called it a night after the show. What a way to finish off fasnacht!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I am beginning to think Christina has been captured by aliens and transported by a 747 freighter to some far away planet...hope all is well....Tom

Christina said...

Tom I agree, I've been totally slack in updating! Expect a few soon (albeit late)! Glad to see someone is still reading.... = )