Coco's Fasnacht Costume

Last Saturday we took Coco to a children's Fasnacht celebration in Neumarkt, our favorite part of the old city in Zurich. It was a beautiful sunny day and just the right amount of festivities and excitement for our little 2-and-a-half-year-old sweetie. Her costume was a roaring success. Click through to see more photos and read more about Fasnacht.

Fasnacht is actually a pre-Lent celebration based in Basel. You could call it the Swiss Mardi Gras. Basler Fasnacht is so popular and famous, that other cities around Switzerland have created their own Fasnacht celebrations, not to be confused with the real thing. Because Basler Fasnacht starts at 4am on the dot! (This is Switzerland, after all;) it's not exactly child-friendly. So we were happy to take Coco to a much tamer children's version right here in town. It started at 1:33 pm, also on the dot apparently, because we missed the opening.

Fasnacht is marked by confetti and costumes, in my humble opinion. J was super on top of it and sourced a costume for Coco. After trying a few shops, he couldn't find anything, so he opted to make something. He popped into the art teacher at his school and together they rustled up the necessary components to make something fun. We really have no idea what Coco was, but she was adorable. :) And she was positively enamored with the confetti!

Coco ran all over and we were surprised at how well her costume held up!

We hung out in the mostly empty square for a bit, thinking we had missed the festivities all together while J dutifully showered Coco with confetti. Then we heard the little children's parade approaching. At first, Coco was a little bit afraid. It involved lots of drums and shouting from the revelers.

But pretty soon she got the courage to go off and find them.

Everybody stopped to oooh and aaah over how cute Coco was in her little costume. Probably more than a hundred people took her photo. No exaggeration!

We only joined the parade for about 200 meters. That was plenty. Coco liked it, but she preferred to keep to the side and she was pretty leery of the scary masks and costumes.

We listened to the band play in the square for a while and then continued on to enjoy the sunny day - with smiles on our faces and lots of confetti in our hair. Overall, it was a total success and I highly recommend it to parents of toddlers in the Zurich area.