Hellau and Alaaf ...

... are two things you hear in Germany but not in Switzerland at Carnival. Carnival, dear English people, is what most nations with some sort of catholic heritage celebrate between the 11th of November and ash wednesday with a peak towards the end of that time. Unfortunately—blame your own history—the only carnival related thing that survived the reformation in Britain is a pastry made of flour, milk and eggs. So while you commemorate the war at the start of the carnival season (11.11.) and enjoy your pancakes at the end of it—and actually think it´s an awesome custom to eat once a year what others have for breakfast every day—most of Europe turns topsy-turvy and parades through the streets with weird costumes, music and lots of alcohol. And of course with pancakes. Swiss carnival pancakes are called Fasnachtschüechli, that´s Swiss German for Fastnachtskuchen or "carnival cake". They're crispy and curvy and actually delicious.



The Swiss got something wrong though. I'm not sure why exactly, but many local carnival celebrations officially started after ash wednesday. Though this defeats the point of Fasnacht ("fasting eve"), since this is supposed to be the night before lent, the Swiss don't seem to bother too much. Particularly interesting was the carnival in Basel this week. It started on Monday morning at 4am with the so called Morgestraich. All the lights in the entire town were turned off at exactly 4am and an endless parade of masked people with lanterns on their heads started to walk through the streets, playing flutes and drums and didn't stop for 72 hours.

So on Monday night I found myself at a balcony in Basel, watching this spectacular show, then having flour soup and onion cake for breakfast at 6am and a little walk through the town by the river Rhine, which we crossed using a cable drawn boat with a hippy driver. When I finally crawled into my bed back in Zurich it was 10.30 in the morning and I knew I'd enjoy my 3 hours of sleep until I had to get up for uni again.

What do the Swiss say instead of Hellau and Alaaf? I don't know. You hear an Alaaf every now and again, but a nice diminutive Swiss version doesn't seem to exist. Maybe Alääfli? Anyway, it was fun. Better than boring pancakes anyway.