Fasnacht 3: Waggis!

…continued from Fasnacht 2

Now the fun can really begin! At about 6:30am we went back to the hotel my parents were staying at to partake in the traditional Fasnacht meal. This consisted of “Onion Pie” (basically a quiche) and “Flour Soup” (not soup – it was just gravy. A whole bowl of gravy). Not something I would necessarily choose to eat all the time but hey, when in Rome I suppose. We all collapsed for a nap until about 8:30am when I got on my bike and went to work. Barely anyone was in the office, and thank goodness Monday and Wednesday of this week are always half work days. I met up with my parents again in the early afternoon and we headed back to the Old Town to check out the parades.

Now we could see all the Cliques and their costumes very clearly.

The construction of all the costumes was amazing. The detail & precision were completely professional. Incredible…

 

I think this next picture may be my favorite of the day.

The main attraction of the parades are the carnival-like floats with Waggis (the grotesque clown-like masked people) who throw either candy, confetti, fruit or flowers at you depending on their mood. Generally kids get candy or a tiny bit of confetti, men get oranges thrown at them, women get flowers. I only managed to get fruit and confetti! Clearly my approach was way off…

The picture below is of a nice Waggis giving out candy to kids. Normally the candy (and aforementioned objects) get thrown from up high to whoever in the crowd is the fastest to grab it. My mother, my sweet, wonderful, mild-mannered mother, was literally elbowing kids out of the way to scrounge for gross pieces of candy that ended up on the street! Seriously! I had to tell her off  because honestly, let the kids have the candy. I suppose her inner child came out amid memories of competing with three siblings and she felt the need to mark her territory

The Waggis generally picked out younger, attractive women to attack with confetti. This one didn’t look too happy…

So much confetti! I love the fact that you can only buy confetti one color at a time, never mixed. It’s to prevent people from scooping it up from the streets and throwing “used” confetti. Gross!

The next few pictures are of what the streets looked like after awhile. But never fear, this is Switzerland. It all got cleaned up in a matter of hours only to be covered again the next day…

To be continued…

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