‘S isch aifach die greeschti Fasnacht in dr ganze Schwiiz!

It’s Monday at 4:00 am and, suddenly, all the lights go off simultaneously; next thing you know, there are people wearing bizarre costumes and masks while fifing/drumming with lamps on their heads. Where in the world would this ever happen? In no other place than Switzerland, of course! You’ve probably already heard that the Swiss like to do things a bit different from time to time, well, this is by no means the exception.

In Basel, the Carnival (Fastnacht, in Standard German) kicks off at exactly four in the morning the Monday after Ash Wednesday, why? I’m not quite sure, but all I know is that the Catholic Church is not a big fan of the timing, more on that later.

The journey for me started at ~23:45 when we hopped on a DB train. The ride was not unusual, since I’ve been to Basel several times before, due to its proximity to Freiburg. This time, however, the train was mostly full with people who were really excited about the famous basler Fasnacht Morgenstraich–which I’ll translate as “Basel Carnival Morning Parade”–who were already drinking their badischer Wein (von der Soonneee verwöööhnt!) literally left and right. Upon arrival, our group started growing because there were several people we met on the way, as well as others whom we already knew but did not know were coming, so we decided to walk from the Basel Badischer Bahnhof, in north Basel, to the center city, which took somewhere between 15 and 30 minutes. The walk there was not as boring as I had expected it to be, mainly because we stopped several times to take photos/eat/chat with drunken-locals-with-an-even-more-incomprehensible-Swiss-German (I even took a photo with one, but had to delete to make space for videos). Another interesting stop was at a sausage booth, just after crossing the Rhein. At said booth, I asked the person selling the food for a “Weißwuascht,” and then the man chuckled and told me something along the lines of “Weißwurst? Mr sin i dr Schwiiz, nid i Bayern!” (“White sausage? We’re in Switzerland, not in Bavaria!”) and then he laughed again and told me the Swiss-German word for it, but it was impossible to pronounce and at the moment I can’t remember it. Later on, a friend asked a man in the street when the “Umzug” was coming and he was told that there are no Umzugs in Switzerland, that those happen in Germany and that, however, there is a “Straich” (Streich, in Standard German) coming at four in the morning. The Swiss seem to be very proud of their culture and non-German (?) heritage, or at least that’s the impression I’ve gotten every time I’ve been there, but maybe it seems that way to me because people here don’t seem to feel (or admit to) being proud of their German heritage since that’s still a taboo, for obvious reasons.

The parade itself was very surreal, to say the least. By around three or so we were fed and awaiting what we knew was about to come, so we decided to go to one of the streets close to one of the bigger churches (not the Münster). By this hour there were already thousands upon thousands of anxious spectators, most of which seemed to be Swiss. Then, suddenly, it all got dark in an instant, people cheered and fifing was heard. From then on everything seemed, very bizarre and weird in the best possible way. The costumes they were wearing, along with their masks, somehow did not seem out of place when one looked at the lamps they wore on their heads.

There was more to the Morgenstraich than the music and the light. Something else that always captivates the attention of the spectators is the message each float displays. This year, some of the more popular topics were: the Pope, Environmental Problems, Retirment Age, Russia, and loss of ‘Swiss’ Culture–even Homer (not the Odyssey one, but the Simpsons one) made a cameo! The main issue they had with Pope Benedict XVI was his antiquated, colonialistic and intolerant view of the world. Some of the main things they mentioned were his intolerance of other non-Catholic Churches and his crazy public statements, such as saying in Brazil that the natives in South Amercia were ’silently longing’ for Christianity and arguing that Galileo’s trail was fair and just. Of course, no critique of the Catholic Church would be complete without the mentioning the opposition to contraceptives.

(Ratzikal: Roma locuta. Causa finita. Locus Dei.)

(“Only one Church protects eternally and this Church: that’s me”)

(“it’s just too warm”)

That’s just a quick sample of the many floats that were there. The last hour or so of our stay was different, because we started walking between musical groups with some of the locals, the interesting part, though scary at some points, is that the groups sometimes stopped while those behind us continued on, and then turned around and walked towards us! This shenanigans continued until our departure, sometime between 6- and 7:30. I was able to go to bed by just around 8:30–good times. This semester is virtually over now. What’s next? Sverige.

- Bork Bork.

Tu vuò fà l’americano… in la Francia?!

It’s night here, which means it is pitch-dark and there is also a melodious silence in the crisp air; maybe it has to do with Christmas’ arrival. A .5 cm layer of frost ([der] Frost, in German) covers everything and it almost looks like snow, except that it’s made up of weird crystals that, when seen from up close, look like pine trees. It has been that way for a while (it was -8°C last night) and that is not something get evokes feelings of cheerfulness and happy-go-lucky-ness which meant that the stress of midterms worsened. What solved the problem? A spontaneous road trip that spanned four countries: driving from Stuttgart (A), Germany, to Nice (E), France; with a stop in Milan (D), Italy, on the way there and in Basel (C), Switzerland, on the way back. What made this trip crazier and seemingly random is that fact that I was asked to ride along nearing midnight a Friday and by ~13:00 of the following day we were crossing the Swiss border in a hybrid car. Usually I’m not somebody who enjoys being in a car for hours, but this drive is very different. My trip started in Freiburg (B), which is at the edge of the Black Forest, and took me through the Swiss Alps and part of northern Italy to end in the Côte d’Azur, in the French Mediterranean. Seeing everything change suddenly withing a couple of hours is a really amazing experience and it became most obvious in Switzerland. If you didn’t know already know it, Switzerland is a very multicultural country (four official languages: German, French, Italian, and Romansh) that believes in neutrality (its official name is Confœderatio Helvetica, in Latin) and it is for that reason that its de facto capital is in Bern, while the federal supreme court is in Lausanne, and other important offices are spread over the country. How sudden are the changes there? Well, at one point we entered a long tunnel and, suddenly, at the end of it everything was in Italian and not in German. Crossing the Italian border was also different, even though people still spoke the same language. I know this is very stereotypical, but the driving was crazy! People drove a lot more recklessly, faster, and used the horn a lot more often; oddly enough, that made it feel a little like Ecuador.

It was already dark when we entered Italy, so we decided to take a short detour and eat dinner in Milan. The way the streets are laid out, the road conditions, the vegetations, the smells, faster cars breaking traffic laws, speeding motorcycles, music all around us seemed very Latin American–I loved it. We walked around a bit in the old city, in la Piazza del Duomo, and went into la Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II where we ate a incredibly delicious, albeit expensive, dinner. After having spent no more than four hours there, we continued our journey to Nice, but Italy left a good after-taste in my mouth and I can barely wait until I go to Padua, Verona, and Venice in late January.

A small sign (smaller than the “Welcome to North Carolina” signs) let us know we had entered France and, once again, everything suddenly (within a few dozen feet) changed to French, but it wasn’t just the language, but other things like speed limits and road signs looked slightly different. The whole ride from the back seat seemed like a blurry watercolor painting with oil pastel highlights, specially when driving in the Mediterranean area where Italy meets France: driving next to precipice with mountains on one side and the sea on the other.

The arrival in Nice was very stressful because it was very late and we were cranky. To make matters worse, it’s virtually impossible to find a free parking spot because the streets are very narrow in this old city and everybody has a car. After finally managing to park the car we made it to the hotel and slept like logs. The morning thereafter started a lot earlier than I had planned and waking up early was definitely worth it. The sun shone much more intensely than I would’ve had anticipated and the wind blew, which made it very cold, but I didn’t mind at all, because I hadn’t seen a beach in months! Walking around the city was a very refreshing experience, from the daily routine in cold, dark, and cloudy Germany. I hadn’t seen a sun this bright and a Carolina-blue sky in a while and that combination made everything around me look like a hybrid between an oil painting and something out of a technicolor movie. Most of the houses ranged from a light papaya color to a warmer light mustard color, the water fluctuated in coloration from a very deep blue to almost turquoise. The mountains in the backdrop were a washy sandy beige dotted with trees of varying hues. In the distance we saw a hill that overlooked the sea and we made our way there, with the water on our right side. We encountered people going into the frigid water; a small improvised petting-zoo with sheep, cows, goats, and horses; street musicians playing music to which an old lady happily danced; a small Christmas market; and we also saw rollerblader zoom past us.

Once at the foot of the hill we started going up, stopping every few steps to take more photos of the slightly ever-changing view of an intensely blue sea that seemed to be in flames where the sun reflected the light. At the edge of this water, small polished stones served as buffers and created what looked like a half moon from that height. The wind blew even harder and I couldn’t help but stop and just look at the water for a while. The city looks a lot different from up there and it gives you a very different perspective than walking among tall housings in narrow, curving, sloping cobblestone streets. On the way down, we decided to go off on a little detour and went down the other other side of the hill to close to where the lighthouse protrudes into the sea. The road was very curvy and very few cars were on it and trees and paths were also all around us, most of which led to unknown locations on the hill. Being down there, so close to the water, was also something I had missed and that compels me to want to come back in the warmer months, but before all the hordes of people overcrowd the place and before it gets unbearably hot. The food? Also amazing and, luckily, not as expensive as in Milan, though a bit more than what I’d pay here in Freiburg. And that day had come to an end. We left early the next morning and made a small stop in Basel, where we saw the Weihnachtsmarkt and were confused several times by not only by how they speak the language, but also by the Swiss norms and standards.

Events like these do seem ephemeral, but memories aren’t.

La vida no es la que uno vivió, sino la que uno recuerda, y cómo la recuerda para contarla.
– Gabriel García Márquez.

Mein Leben als Student.

Most people write in their travel blogs about their anecdotes and anything else they find out of the ordinary in comparison to their normal life, back at home, but this place, to some degree, also feels like home now. Sitting here, writing this entry, it feels like I’ve always lived here in Freiburg, like I belong here; I think that’s the reason why I haven’t been blogging much. Waking up every morning, eating my German cereal (sorry, no Müsli) with my organic soy milk no longer feels new and exciting, walking by buildings with giant drawings on them seems as natural and alltäglich as walking past a pirate ship with a sandbox next to it and seeing tree houses on my way to the tram stop. People stop me for directions every now and then, which means I don’t look as lost as I once did, I know short-cuts around the old city, and know when my stop is, even if I’m with my eyes closed sleeping or reading a book and I have also started to memorize the umsteigen Möglichkeiten announcements in the trams.

Things are changing here as well: the Bächle (pictured) are not currently running and “the leaves that [were] green turn[ed] to brown.” But perhaps the main thing that has changed is that I am no longer in what seemed like a very long vacation; classes have started. I have almost finished my first two week of regular classes and I am slowly transitioning into the academic mood in which I need to be, but it is not very easy, since I haven’t had any real university work since the end of April. The classes I am taking are not overly difficult, but that is a good thing this semester because I not only need to readjust to the academic environment, but I also need to adjust to the German academic environment. The class in which I have to do the most work is linguistics, but it is definitely worth it since I am learning a lot and I am enjoying it, but perhaps most of my classmates will see that as masochism. I also will not be part of that 40% of students who fail the class (durchfallen), but in order for that to happen I must spend a lot of time outside of class preparing myself by doing things like analyzing the what happens in my mouth when I make certain sounds and pairing them with their corresponding IPA counterparts. This class is made up of three parts: a Vorlesung (lecture), a Seminar, and a Tutorat (tutorial), which total about 6 hours a week. My other classes? Die Leiden des jungen Werther, Deutsche Literaturgeschichte im Überblick: Teil 1 (Overview of German literature history: part 1), and German-Spanish translation. So far the experience has been very positive and there are some differences that I really like, such as students generally having more respect and appreciation for professors.