Bellinzona Carnival

The winter break has finally come to an end. On the last weekend, I took the train down to Tecino, the Italian speaking Canton in the South of Switzerland. A friend of mine in the picturesque town of Bellinzona had told me about the crazy carnival going on there, called RaBaDaN 2012, so I went and checked it out.

The Guggenmusik parade on Saturday afternoon.

I arrived on the Friday night and the small town was animated by the spirit of the carnival. Thousands of people donning the most interesting costumes I have ever seen – including Lego people, human sofas and the YMCA village people – danced and drunk over a wild 5 days of partying. Many of whom, on the trot. Sadly I was only there for one night of partying, but that was alright. My recent travels, partying and lack of sleep were slowly catching up on me anyway.

There were many bizarre costumes to be seen.

This time of year is the carnival season, not just for Bellinzona, but also for Germany (where the infamous Cologne carnival attracts tens of thousands) and the rest of Switzerland. Bellinzona may only be a small town, but they sure know how to throw a party. The centre of the town was full of brass bands, beer tents, club tents and drunk Swiss / Italians.

One of Bellinzona's numerous castles also seen to be in the carnival spirit.

It was really cool and now I'm looking forward to Zurich's carnival (Fasnacht) from 24^th – 26^th February. Although this time, it would be pretty cool to come up with an interesting costume of my own to wear!