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Published: February 23rd 2010
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"Why is there confetti in my purse and how did it get everywhere else?"
This brief thought seemed to be one of many like it that I asked myself while in Bern for the Fasnacht festival. It was a whirlwind event filled with bright colors and blue skies, something that Ashley, Kate and I found ourselves enjoying to the fullest. Since we were unable to make it to the famous Fasnacht's in Lucern or Basel, Ashley found out that we would be able to go to Switzerland's capital city to see theirs. Although Bern is thought to be a boring city, which I can attest to on the day's when there is no festival going on, it turned out to be one of my favorite things I have done in Switzerland thus far. Not only did we dress up, we also got to see a parade, throw massive amounts of silver confetti and drink to our hearts content after dark when all the grownups came out to play.
Our day started with an early morning meeting at Ashley's to get ready and put on our costumes. The theme that we chose was Springtime, so basically we just covered ourselves
in flowers and face paint to match. Not only was this an easy look to accomplish, it was also one that garnered lots of attention from other party goers. The general opinion being that because there were three of us it made the outfits stand out more. The parade lasted about two hours but my group lasted for only one of them because our feet were frozen solid after standing outside waiting for the parade to begin for 3 hours. So of course we ended up in the bar right as it opened, in order to thaw ourselves and prepare for the real partying to begin. Once we finished up inside Nelson's, the food vendors in the street had set up shop and were doing quite a bit of business with other like minded people, selling everything from beer to hot wine from burritos to hot dogs and sausages. Pretty much the standard fare with any festival. I however was extremely excited for the mexican booth selling the burritos and nachos, these being hard to find in Europe in general and Switzerland only having about one or two restaurants per-large city. So this means that Zurich boasts two Mexican restaurants,
both of which charge four times more than what I am willing to pay for a tortilla with cheese. After we satisfied our appetites for food, we went around in search of booze, of which there was more than enough to go around.
Several hours of drinking commenced then, with live bands playing in the background and new people to meet. The last train that we could take with our train passes left at 12:02 in the morning so that was our only gauge as to how long we had left to drink for. Well, when I drink I tend to forget little common courtesies like telling your friends you are leaving them to go with another group of guys dressed like a bad 1970's show. No no, the houdini in me decided it would be a fantastic idea to separate from my two friends and go off with some random men I just met in the tent we were in. Awesome. These seven guys I ended up with however turned out to be a great time and treated me like their long lost 70's princess. I even managed to remember to get back to the train station to
go home. The only bad thing was that Kate and Ashley didn't make it back on the train with me. So that left me without keys to get back into my house and having to call my boss at 3am to let me in the gate and leave a key outside for me. Not exactly the type of wake-up call she was probably hoping for, thank goodness though she was understanding! Kate and Ashley ended up not getting home until 8am due to train difficulties and timing issues. All three of us ended up having a blast and loved every second we were at the Fasnacht in Bern, if I was going to be in Switzerland again next year at this time I would return there for sure.
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