Week 4! - Fasnachts!

Hello again! This week was yet another week full of firsts, exciting new memories, and fun! The week started off with another fun Fasnacht tradition. The whole family biked over to this hill. On this hill was a huge pile of wood. And I mean huge. There were multiple trees within this pile, a long with lots and lots of scraps of wood. We got there just in time as they started to light it. A few people lit sticks on fire and let it spread to the pile. Within a minute or two, the whole pile was in flames. The dead trees caught on fire first, so in the beginning there was just a lot of smoke, and then the rest of it caught on fire. There were so many sparks flying everywhere. I wasn’t really thinking when I got dressed for this event and I wore my down jacket. That was definitely a mistake because it’s extremely flammable and it would not be good for the jacket if a spark burned a whole in it. So I decided i’d rather be cold than ruin my jacket so I took it off and stuffed it under my polyester sweatshirt. All in all i’m glad I did that because I wouldn’t’ve wanted to patch my jacket. Anyways, after they lit the huge fire it was time for the next part of the tradition. People took these square pieces of wood and put them on these long sticks. Then they lit the wood on fire and used the stick like a baseball bat to hit the square piece of wood against a ramp that made the wood go flying off. It looked really cool because it was dark out so all you saw was this beam of orange light. It kind of looked like a shooting star. They were playing music, people were all standing around watching, and the people making the wood go flying all said this little speech before making their wooden piece fly and they would dedicate each wooden piece to someone. Some of the dedications were funny. For example one of them was dedicated to these police officers that ran over a sign, and then they had to call other police officers to verify the incident. But others were more serious, like to their wife or to a a very respected person.

This is the huge fire. It's hard to tell how huge it was in person, but you can see some wooden palates on the bottom of the pile for comparison. 

   Here is a video of the fire disk in action. 

After watching this awesome tradition for a while, we all headed back on our bicycles. Renate, Rahel, and I all got a restful 3 hours of sleep before we were off on our next adventure. Andy drove us to the bus station at 12:30 in the morning. Our bus left at 1 AM and drove us to Basel, Switzerland! I have this thing where I can never sleep sitting up. Busses, planes, trains, cars, etc, I can’t sleep. I can sit there exhausted nodding off for hours like I did on my plane ride to Germany, but I can’t sleep. But I made the most of it by listening to The Greatest Showman Soundtrack which always puts me in a good mood. When we got to Basel around 2:30 in the morning we had to walk a little ways to where all the festivities were. On our walk I got to see quite a bit of Basel! I saw one of the train stations, and lots of cool architecture. We also got to see people getting ready for the parade. We had quite a bit of time to kill, because the parade didn’t start until 4 AM. The reason it’s so early is because it needs to be in the dark and they make it so people can go to work after. We killed time by walking around and we got some Swiss money. Renate’s friend recommended a bakery for us to try so we tried to find that. It took us a long time to find though because the streets of Basel were like Venice. They were all twisted around and some of them were more like skinny ally ways than actual streets. After about an hour of walking around and looking at our map, we found it! But at this time it was about time for the lights to turn off. At 4 AM all the street lights go off along with a lot of the store lights so that it becomes pitch black. And at exactly 4 AM when all of this happens the parade begins. I’ve been calling it a parade, but it’s not really. The people do walk around in costumes playing instruments, but it’s in no order. They just all walk around wherever they want, on all the twisted streets and alleys ways, thousands and thousands of people. Eventually everybody passes through the market square. It’s this big empty square in the middle of town that usually has events like farmers markets, but not today! The people’s costumes were so fun and creative. All the masks and costumes were hand painted and like real works of art. They played the drums and piccolo and marched along. There were also these huge floats. The floats had candles inside of them so they lit up. It was so so beautiful. We walked around some more so we could see everything. Some of the floats were very artistic, but there were also a lot of political ones. Donald Trump made an appearance on many floats. Overall this experience was truly magical and i’m so glad I went. I would say that this holiday is like a combination of the Macy’s Thanksgiving day parade, and New Years Eve, and Day of the Dead. Such a beautiful holiday! 

An example of a float at the Basel Parade

More floats! 

One of the political floats

In this photo there was enough light for the camera to notice some of the people in costumes. I could see them all in real life but it was too dark for the camera.

Some more cute floats.

  A video of the floats at the parade so you can hear the music!

Our bus home left at 6 AM, and we got back around 7:30. Obviously we were all exhausted, so we went to bed while the boys got ready for work/ school. I woke up around lunch time and went to school. It was hard to concentrate that day because I was so exhausted but I did it! This week at language school was great because we had a new teacher! Our usual teacher Karin had her vacation this week so we had a substitute named Jenny. Jenny was great, It was good to have a new teacher to mix it up a little. I think the new teaching techniques helped me learn in different ways. I can’t believe there’s only one more week of language school! Karin will be back for this week. This week at language school we also got a lot of new students. There’s Liliana from Romania, Irena from Moscow Russia, and Rocco. (I’m not sure where he’s from). I’m kinda glad I only have one more week of language school because now our class is getting pretty big. The more people we have, the less we get done because everything takes longer. Also this week I hit another milestone in my process of learning german! I read a children’s book by myself and understood everything! It was called “Opas Schlafrezept” (Grandpas Sleep Prescription/Recipe) It was a  cute story about a baby seal who lived on a beach and fell asleep each night by listening to the waves. But one night the ocean was still and so the baby seal couldn’t fall asleep because there were no waves. So the Grandpa seal has to figure out a way to make the waves come back. He does all these funny things but eventually remembers that shells held up to your ears sounds like waves so he made a pair of shell headphones for the baby. I’m just happy I could understand it! 

This weekend was also a lot of fun as always! Saturday was very relaxing, and after lunch we went to the play called, “The Little Prince”. I read the book in english before we went so I was able to follow the story better. I could understand some scenes better than others but overall I think I could understand the main points. When we got home from the play we decided to dance a little bit! We listened to the Greatest Showman and Rahel taught us some of the things she learned at her dance school. It was a lot of fun! Then on Sunday was Timo’s birthday! In the morning he opened presents and cards and then we had a relaxing morning while he played with his toys. I gave Timo the game, “Spot It” and we played it as a family for a while. That was also a lot of fun. Because this blog is getting long, I'll write about the rest of the birthday party in next weeks blog! Thanks for reading! As always feel free to email me or comment any questions you might have! Have a great day!