Fasnacht
The Basel calendar seems to revolve around Fasnacht, although in reality I think people either get really into it or they hate it and go out of town (which plenty of people do). OK, so it's not Carnaval, but it has its own charm. Last year we did as much as we could, including the part at 4:00am on Monday morning. This year Gretchen wasn't here, the trams still couldn't get through the snow to our neighborhood, and quite frankly the thought of waking up at 3:00am just wasn't terribly appealing. But today we went downtown and caught a little bit of children's day at Fasnacht.
Last year I commented on how Fasnacht may really illustrate a strong sense of fatalism that kids here must grow up with: sometimes you get candy, and sometimes you get confetti (or Räppli as it's called here) dumped on your head. The nice thing about children's day is that the tables are turned...children can, and do, dump confetti on adults. Today, for example, we were standing there when a kid in his costume came up to Gretchen and offered her a lollipop with one hand. She smiled and took it, knowing what was coming up next--he hurled a handful of confetti at her, which she took like a good sport.
There were lots of the usual people wearing crazy masks/costumes, which I would think might freak some kids out (especially since clowns can freak people out).
As usual, the ground was completely littered with confetti (the youngest kids would just grab handfuls of it and drop it on the ground, clearly not yet being old enough to get the whole confetti-as-weapon thing.
One of the truly amazing things is that when you go downtown, you would never know the rest of the city is buried under two feet of snow. I can't imagine the Herculean effort that went into clearing the snow, although it might explain why the rest of the city was so slow to be dug out (I imagine decisions were made at the highest levels that no matter what happened elsewhere, downtown would be cleared in time for Fasnacht). So Gretchen got some satisfaction in discovering that there was at least a small trace of snow that hadn't yet been cleared.
Last year I commented on how Fasnacht may really illustrate a strong sense of fatalism that kids here must grow up with: sometimes you get candy, and sometimes you get confetti (or Räppli as it's called here) dumped on your head. The nice thing about children's day is that the tables are turned...children can, and do, dump confetti on adults. Today, for example, we were standing there when a kid in his costume came up to Gretchen and offered her a lollipop with one hand. She smiled and took it, knowing what was coming up next--he hurled a handful of confetti at her, which she took like a good sport.
There were lots of the usual people wearing crazy masks/costumes, which I would think might freak some kids out (especially since clowns can freak people out).
As usual, the ground was completely littered with confetti (the youngest kids would just grab handfuls of it and drop it on the ground, clearly not yet being old enough to get the whole confetti-as-weapon thing.
One of the truly amazing things is that when you go downtown, you would never know the rest of the city is buried under two feet of snow. I can't imagine the Herculean effort that went into clearing the snow, although it might explain why the rest of the city was so slow to be dug out (I imagine decisions were made at the highest levels that no matter what happened elsewhere, downtown would be cleared in time for Fasnacht). So Gretchen got some satisfaction in discovering that there was at least a small trace of snow that hadn't yet been cleared.
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