The first most beautiful day

The first most beautiful day is here. The bells have rung. It is night and all the lights are out and we are in an almost perfect darkness and the pubs and the restaurants are beginning to fill up. We say little and there is something faintly rebellious in the way we walk into the sound of the whistles and drums. The Morgesraich has begun and only the lanterns are lit and people’s masks glower in the dark, their heads alive with all manner of lights. The procession sways through the night, satire and irony and mockery its message, lit for all the world to see by.

The 72-hour Basler Fasnacht or Carnival of Basel or better still The Three Most Beautiful Days begins in darkness – at exactly 4 am on the Monday following Ash Wednesday – with the Morgestraich, an impish and irreverent first procession through the old town. 

Photo courtesy James Dudley