fasnacht

Our village celebrated Fasnacht this past week. From what I can gather, Fasnacht is a giant celebration, akin to Carnival. It happens every year around this time and, where we live, is a big deal. Different towns have their celebrations on different days, so we have been running into them (getting stuck in traffic detours) for the past few weeks. From what we had gathered, they consisted of parades, parties and people wearing strange costumes. So when ours came to town, we felt pretty prepared. Since the girls ski holidays didn't overlap at all, the two days off for Fasnacht were the only two days they had off school together. We tried to talk them into a family ski trip but they had been eagerly anticipating their chance to wear weird costumes and watch a parade and there was zero chance they missed this party.  After a morning skiing session they rushed home to get fancied up. 

They all picked out their costumes, Violet's doubled as her Halloween costume. Eliot was a clown, which she based off the giant, paper mache jester head that has been grinning down at us from its perch over the main road for several weeks. Now that it has been taken down, I have little doubt it is in the background set to some horror film. 

Winston was a bear. If anyone asks, that is a bear hat. Bears often wear raccoon hats. Bears also love to eat soup and all kinds of vegetables. (I'm not sure how much longer I can get away with this, but I will continue milking it until the day I can't. Go down in flames is my parenting motto.)

The very fact that Rocky still owns this hat is a testament to my enduring patience (also, laziness at doing anything about anything).

 Who doesn't love a bag of confetti to throw at total strangers? (Parents, that's who.)

 The parade consisted of marching bands, school classes and floats. They handed out oranges, candy, slices of banana bread, whole loaves of bread and, if you were lucky, unwrapped hot dogs.

 The floats take a lot of their inspiration from the local and world events of the last year. We didn't have a clue about any of the local stuff. But we understood this Uncle Sam shouting, "Make America great again, America first, Oberageri second."

 We also understood the olympics one. though the Jamaican skier with the bronze medal seemed a bit out of place.

 My personal favorites were Putin, shirtless on the back of a bear and the Trump head that rose out of the American top hat. He is unavoidable.

 So much confetti!

 I have done so much vacuuming and it is still in my house.

 The highlight for Winston was that each of the floats was pulled by a tractor. This kid lives in tractor heaven.

 After the parade, we went to a main plaza were there were 15 minute descriptions in German on each of the floats. At least that's what we guessed. For all we know they could have been reading the first Harry Potter. Then each of the kids got a grab bag.

 Which was awesome. We reheated those hot dogs for dinner and called it a night. I think Switzerland might just make Fasnacht fans of us.