Mar 14, 2011

Suprise, sunrise.

And today we'll find out how I ended up in an oher country passportless!

The day and nights seemed to have merged this weekend. I'll start form saturday night.

In short, I went to a spiele spielen (or visas versa- a play games) party with my host sis. Where I possibly won a game of poker and drank milk and honey :o) First we rolled up at that house that in the middle of nowhere thats like a barn. Honestly it's so strange. You walk into this huge random barn with like a tractor and hay and things that fit into the catorgory and there's like these big stairs right in the middle to go up to the next level and then to the left theres this insignificant door and you walk in and your in a house. Buzzzzzzzzzzzzy :p

And there was the same people as there was at the last party thing I went to there. Thing is, they're all couples. And German kids, well teens, are like really.. really into pdo - or maybe just kissing eachother. I find it quite... uncomfortable. Like I'll just stare in a direction then I have to turn my head really fast becuase I'll see people making out. At school, at parties, everywhere.

Then we left that house and went to another, where we played some wii game that involved finding the controllers ...? Twas good fun.

AND THEN we went to the 600 year old house where my host sis's boyf lives and played Poker, Texas Holden. I have no idea how to play, but just decided to go along with it, I'm quite proud I picked it up even though I am in Germany and they speak German.

I risked heaps one round at the start on a bluff, so I was playing pretty safe and then I realized I wasn't having a 'lucky game'- I wasn't like absolutely losing but I hadn't wona round, so I just bluffed and went all in- and won. The others went ou for a smoke and decided to call it a night cuz it was like 2am so I can only estimate that I won. But isn't milk good for your bones and brains or something and so it was most likely a correct estimate.

Then we stayed at Jacobs. Its really weird staying at someones house alone. Like I have a room to myself when I sleep there and I'm always really paranoid about when to get out of bed cuz none or everyone might be up. So far, so good however.

When my family came to pick us up we went to the Triburg Schwarzwald museum. I want go on about what cool things I saw, or how big it was- but living in such an old country and seeing things that are really old is extreamly humbling for me.

We then looked around Triburg and retreated home for a nap. As that night I was going with my host papa, sis and some afs people to a 4am parade in Basel!

Had a nap, ate some food. Checked my email and got a shock, so I couldn't sleep anymore- in order to relax I just had to read gossip girl :p

Then at 11:30 we went to meet ate other car load and headed to Schonach to pick up my Bolivan friend and her host brother form Turkey. When we were looking for her house, I had a moment. I was running down the road of this little village, searching for a house number and the clock striked 12pm. i felt like a princess night creature form back in the day dancing to the clock.. I don't know how to explain it it was jst such a cool feeling.

It was a fun car ride, we talked and ate over priced chips. We then parked in a random town and took a short bus ride to Basel. In the other car was a Belgium girl, that has been here for a little while, the boy from South America that I trained from Frankfurt and this AFS volenteer who was like extrreamly interesting. He was very smart and had such an interesting life. He told me about how he travels around Europe on his motorbike and like FedEx's (or the german equivilant) clothes or whatever to like a random hotel in say, Florence, where he might just end up in a few days.

Anyway, we were talking like 'meet here if.. and' stuff and he was like 'BTW don't litter, in Switzerland it's a very serious offence' and I was like 'We're in Switerzland?! I thought you had to show your passport before going to another country.' And everyones like, 'you didn't bring your passport?!' Scheiße...

We had an hour or so before the parade started, so we walked inton the altstadt and found a good place to stand. The fasnacht parade in Basel is a but speical, becuase Basel is the prodestant capital of the world, or Europe or something, and Fasnacht is Catholic practice. So back in the day when these things were just learning to walk. The Protestants decided that to piss the catholics off, they will start their celebrations a week later, so where I live Fasnacht finished a five days ago or something, but in Basel it's just finishing this week. Also, the parade goes in two directions, I can't remember why but it's probably something to do with pissing off the catholics. 


Basel Fasnacht is in the top 50 festivities in Europe and the only protestant carnival in the world.

So after finding our spot, I was just looking around at my new friend Swiss. She is very beautiful. My friend form Australia that I meet at Frankfurt airport while waiting for the train and I have been emailing. She asked me yesterday weather I think that Fashion is horrible here. This is something I have been debating my head for a while now. It seems for boys, it is better. The boy in my class usually wear jeans and nice strippy sweater and jeans with a nice jacket. So for boys that standard is higher. But for girls, I am not so sure. I keep think I am in Europe, the option for shopping and clothes are huge! But then again I live in a small town and in the nearest shopping town the best they have is H&M. So in my school I can conclude:



In NZ we have a bigger range or horrible to good, where here there is less horrible but better- not really.

HOWEVER IN SWITZERLAND: Wow. Heaven. I wanted to pretend I was some wanabe Satoralist and ask if I could take a photo but these woman and men looks so sophisictaed I couldn't bring myself to ask with my like less then $300NZD camera hahahah. Hopefully, when I go to France for easter I will pick up my balls. I swear I saw like groups of swiss male models hangin out, they were stunning. And all the woman wore amazing coats and cute boats OMG I sound so lame but it was amazing.

I was gushing over this, when the town colck chimmed four.. and boom..! All the lights of the whole town are turned off, darkness. Thousnads of people in darkness. Then all of a sudden the bands starts to drum and it sounds olike the start of a techno song but then one hears hundreds of flutes start to play some happy tune and they march down with like these light picture things on their heard like a hat lighting up the streets again. It was.. speical.

It looked like that

And alos every 'group' had a lighten up puicture float thing, usually a comic sacaristically mocking some political issue. (who knew sizzerland wasn't perfect?) I didn't understand much with those but this is what it looked like



So there were about, I am going to guess and say 400 groups. And a group usually consisted of a float like above, with people carying it, about 20 fluters, and perhaps a few less drummers. All wearing different quirky costumes- like evry individual wearing something different but all equally outrageous. Different to the other parades I had been to.

So this we watched for a while, a new group came every tow minutes inconstantly with crouds of people walking around inbetween. It was a great energy. I wish I could of captured what it felt like. We were in a goregous side street, near the town square with beautiful building and this happy music sounding like screams of joy and the buildings were being lit up by everyone camera flashed and so much people, and so much was happening in this beutiful city. This is starting to sound like creative writting but it was ..inspiring.

After a while we had had enough people watching so we went for a walk to see that famous chuch and ooooh it was magic. Walking up those little narrow euporean streets withthe beautiful buildings. Sitting on a legde and just watching the beautiful Rhine with the flutes in the background and busy people rushing about in the darkness of the morning. It was absolutley a dream. 


My camera didn't take so weel to the ligth and the dark and the falshing of toher camer's so I have found some pictures on the web, that might start to convey to you the beauty of this city:

Can you, or can you not imagine this street at night time. Can you hear the sounds of flute and drums and imagine it fill of people? Can you imagine this little Kiwi girl in uggs, pretty skirt and cape. Simply skippy up this street and stopping at every door in awe of it's beauty. Can you see why I love?
What's better then Switzerland by night? Switzerland by sunrise.

I didn't get arrested, I didn't get lost. Today I came home and slept until 3pm. And I have been trying to share and convey my new love ever since. I feel like an artist because this passion and want for the world is soemthing I think worthy of meseum. Happiness in history. I hope I have a done a good enough job to convince you that Basel Fasnacht is just something you've got to see.

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