Look What We Walked Into

We planned a trip for when our friends, Henry and Lari would be visiting us. We traveled by train to Luzern on Saturday, February 21. As we exited the train and walked through the station we noticed that many of the people we passed were wearing costumes. Some were very elaborate. Left-over confetti was everywhere and we wondered what celebration we had just missed. Having just left Geneva, where nothing out of the ordinary was going on, we were not expecting anything exciting. But we had walked into the middle of "Fasnacht" From what we were able to learn it is a version of "Carnival". There were lots of different bands from the area--all gathered in the "Old-Town" section of the city. These bands were all percussion and brass and all very loud. We had booked a small hotel in the center of Old Town (not knowing about Fasnacht). Each band seemed to have a costume theme that went with their band name. All ages participated.

These elaborate masks were in a store window and many more of this type were seen being worn by those on the street.

More great costumes--this was much better than Halloween.

Each participant certainly seemed to enjoy really getting into the celebration. Whole families dressed in matching costumes. We loved the chicken brood.

The partying did not stop in the evening. It did not stop at midnight. We had heard that it would stop at 3:00 a.m. It did not stop at 3:00 a.m. but went on. There was a quieter time around 4:00, but the "clean-up" crews began their noisy tasks by 6:00 a.m. No sleep--but lots of excitement and fun. It also was very cold and when we looked out the window Sunday morning it was snowing. We boarded the train Sunday morning for Lugano, but that's the next blog.