We'll talk about that, we'll take you to our venues for the shows, probably starting with a headmasters conference in Northumberland, followed by a show in Bakewell in Derbyshire, who knows what then followed by six weeks touring Australia.
I am a writer, motivator, photographer, consumer of mangos, nice wines and good bread. Love the sun, love the sea, and from a stand point, it is NOT OK that children go hungry, go without education, without hope, without love. Anywhere that happens - let us know.
Our website, because you need to know this if you have got even this far, is: www.chocmint.com
It is 28th May '09. We arrived in Europe from Australia in the middle of a ferocious English winter four months ago and and have been in Spain for five months thawing out. Barcelona have just beaten Man United in UEFA Cup Final and all around us, ther eis much rejoicing. We were here last here when Spain won the European Championship, so they're making it a habit. They are the noisest nation on earth whenver they win anything!
Here is some stuff, to get us started. Follow us around Europe, across the Bay of Biscay on Sunday and over to Australia in July. U2 in Dublin in July and a race against time to get to perth for our first shows. I'm likely to say what's on my mind at any time and because writing is a PASSION, something I LOVE doing, it'll all come out and I will get into strife - I know it!
Thoughts:
The Swiss are not known for their flamboyance. Watch-making and the creation of cuckoo clocks are exacting jobs, and the art of making money is a serious business - something Swiss bankers are known all over the world for being superb at. As a race of people the Swiss are serious minded and logical, perfectionists, clean and tidy, with a clear-cut right way to do something, and the wrong way.
So when you arrive in Basel during the Fasnacht Festival that happens every year in either February or March you’d expect a low-key affair, with lots of organised events and everything done in a proper fashion.
Oh no. For three days and nights the Swiss in Basel forget who they’re supposed to be and transform themselves. There is no resemblance between what you see during Fasnacht and what happens the rest of the year.
The city itself is a festival of colour, movement and sound. Tramways and roads close down and bring one of Europe’s busiest intersections to a halt. Ordinary people don masks that have been lovingly created all year and pick up an array of musical instruments, taking to the streets in a cacophony of colour, sound and spectacle, taking tons of coloured confetti with them to dump over and stuff inside the clothes of anyone who’s passing.
I went to one of these events in the early 1980’s and vowed to go back one day, and this year it happened. I asked a friend of mine who came with me back them to come again and at first he was keen, but memories came flooding back and he chickened out. “I can’t get the time off work,” he muttered, apologising.
He also reminisced. “I remember the last time I went. A bunch of masked children kidnapped me onto the back of a truck, stuffed confetti down my shirt and pants, smothered me with shaving cream and dumped me on the other side of the city.”
“Fun though,” I reminded him.
“Yeah, it was. The shaving cream froze. Then I got rushed my a mob of vampires and thrown into a fountain, after they’d smashed the ice.”
“That was a laugh wasn’t it?” I said with a smile.
“It was very funny. Then I met a three metre tall man with a two foot nose who dragged me out of the fountain, took me back to a house full of purple girls with two heads and tusks and filled me with vodka to warm up.”
“Hospitable people, the Swiss,” I agreed.
“Very. I woke up on a train to Athens the next morning with nothing except the clothes I had on, a case of red wine, passport and all my pockets stuffed full of confetti and sticky lollies. I woke up in Milan.”
“Was Milan nice, I never did ask?”
“I don’t know. I got arrested for being a drunken vagrant and spent two days in an Italian jail before bribing my way out and catching a flight back to England to get sacked for being three days late for work.”
“Are you sure you don’t want to come. It’ll be fun?”
He hung up.
At 4am the streets of Basel are usually cold and empty, especially in winter. At the beginning of Fasnacht you cannot move for people, and at that exact hour (because the Swiss are exceptional time keepers) all the lights in the city go out and the drums and piccolo’s start, the festival begins and doesn’t let up until 4am three memorable, exhausting days later. It is very exciting, even after having been pumped full of adrenalin during an event the evening before in a small town called Liestal a few miles outside Basel, where the people truly are barmy.
We were told we had to see this to believe it because if we didn’t go, we never would. So we were standing on a corner in a small, narrow, very old Swiss street surrounded by wooden buildings and a huge excited crowd. We stood for an hour with nothing happening, in the cold, stamping feet, huddled together, and then …
Fire really gets my heart racing, especially having lived in Australia for so long. To start, men came running down the road carrying big torches ablaze with kindling and as they kept coming the crowd got more and more excited, sparks were flying into the night sky and the streets were alight with embers. But then, in disbelief, I looked up and saw a massive blazing wagon come careering down the road towards us. We could feel the heat 50 metres away and as the screams got louder, so did the feeling of panic. You have got to be kidding?
Wave after wave of these wagons passed us, each one bigger than the last. People were having their clothes holed by embers, eyebrows and hairs singed off, but no one moved away, even when one of these monstrous vehicles stopped several feet from us on the other side of the road, but right next to a crowd on the opposite corner.
It’s so hard to describe the heat. Imagine the biggest open fire you’ve sat in front of, then move so close that it’s unbearable, then magnify the fire a hundred times and imagine you’ve been tied down, just to give you some idea. I took photo’s and small clips of video, but I did it cowing with my head down, hands burning and face burning and certain the camera was melting. Each time a wagon passed it was hotter, bigger and each one seemed to put our lives at risk.
The people carrying the torches are doused in water every few minutes and have helmets to protect their heads, but even so the torches are centimetres from their faces and their skin is raw with the heat. Thousands of hot embers are scattered in the street after each passing firestorm and there’s no escape. You cant go anywhere to get away.
We left after an hour of fiery mayhem, returned to Basel 20 minutes away and immediately got caught up with the joyful expectation that Fasnacht always creates. At 4am the fun started and we were swept through days and nights, light and dark, in music and drums, sound and scenes from dreams and nightmares. It was like we’d followed the white rabbit down the hole and been transported to Wonderland.
There are themes each day of the festival. The second day belongs to the children of the city, all dressed in incredible costumes, attacking everyone with confetti, lobbing oranges at people and running amuck across the city. Music, drums, kids free to have fun and assault any adult they see.
Very late into the night when people disperse a little and wander further afield, the city is sucked clean of the ankle deep confetti and by next morning there are only a few little bands wandering around, but by lunchtime you’re ankle deep in confetti again and the city is alive with music, fun, laughter and food, and following the various groups around and around we got sucked in with everyone else to the fantasyland we’d been dropped into.
The masked folk of Basel become the characters they create, I don’t know any other way of describing it. It’s a genuine shock to see them resting with their masks off beside them, or left by the side of a shop while the rest of the creature goes off to buy a bottle of wine or munch on a traditional Basler sausage.
The festival is a way of chasing the winter out from every corner of the city, a very serious business. Being such a cold place Basel used to see it’s fair share of death and disease and Fasnacht is a way of chasing all the ghosts of the winter away, allowing the new season in while frightening the old one out. You notice too that many of the characters have huge noses, which is a throwback to a time when the French invaders came and the Swiss had to drive them away. Big noses equate to being French in this part of Switzerland.
Days and nights go by in a blur. Sometimes we stopped and went back to where we were staying a few minutes from the centre, just to catch our breath, a shower and a few hours sleep, but the pull of the crowds and fear of missing something special sucked us back in for another marathon. Everything you see, hear, smell, taste and feel is different, so Fasnacht is a real treat for the senses.
Monstrous creatures would suddenly descend, surrounding people and falling on them with hands and sacks full of confetti, stuffing them down shirts, pants, inside socks and nowhere is sacred. Dress up in a mask in Basel at Fasnacht and you can get away with anything.
A little wagon full of children trundled past slowly, and I stopped to watch as a young girl fought her conscience. An authority figure must have said to her something like, “Today you can’t get into trouble, go and play my child,” because coming to a decision, she picked up a nearby orange and chucked it as hard as she could into the crowd.
A ripe orange in the back of the head has got to hurt, especially as it only went ten feet before smacking into a lady holding a child’s hand. She squealed and turned around, clutching her head, her expression furious, until she saw the little girl smiling uncertainly at her. Then she smiled back at her, breathed deeply and even forced a laugh. This opened the floodgates, because now the little girl knew she was safe. She plunged into a deep bucket by her side and began lobbing oranges as fast as she could pick them up into the crowd, too closely spaced to avoid being pelted.
She couldn’t miss. There were oranges hitting noses, heads, body shots, and all the while she laughed louder and longer, finally laughing so much she could barely pick her oranges up.
If you go to Europe, and you find yourself there in winter, find a way to go to Fasnacht. Switzerland is an expensive country, but get in and book early, and save for it. Even better, do what we did, and become a member of www.couchsurfing.com and couchsurf. We stayed with a wonderful woman from New Zealand, who was living in Basel and taught at a private International school in the city. I want to go into more depth about this concept of travel later on, as we have hosted dozens of couchsurfers in Albany and always had great people stay with us. For more information go to: http://www.couchsurfing.com
It is this Providence that leads to the unexpected becoming a matter of course. As soon as Biff in Basel, extraordinary name for an extraordinary lady, discovered what we did for a living she had us booked into the school doing a show, and we had an inspired time.
Flights from the UK are cheap too when booked in advance. Try to travel away from weekends, and book as early as you can using either edreams.com or by going to the website of the cheaper airlines. Easyjet or Ryanair are the best, although Ryanair are beginning to make themselves unpopular by charging for even the most basic of needs and calling them luxuries. They are even trying to charge a pound to passengers wanting to go to the toilet, but I’d like to see how they begin policing that one.
The major airlines provide good deals too - they have to. Sometimes flying British Airways or Swissair can be as cheap as the budget carriers, and they are much more civilised. Ryanair are also trying to push through a policy that will mean checking in at the airport is even classed as a ‘perk.’ When they say ‘No Frills Airline’ they mean it. Instead passengers will have to check-in online, and if they don’t will face a 40 pound ($90) check-in fee at their point of departure. Check-in will often cost far more than the flight!
We left Basel in the afternoon after Fasnacht. Everywhere clean again, no confetti, everyone going about their daily tasks as if nothing had happened. It all feels very strange. We spent the morning on trams, staying in Switzerland for breakfast, crossing the French border for brunch followed by another short tram ride to the German border to enjoy bratwurst, sauerkraut and German bier for lunch. Three countries before lunch, then one more before dinner when we landed in England a few hours later.
