Annual carnival festivities gain kicked off in Catholic towns across Switzerland,notably in Lucerne, where revellers were up at 5am to start the party. If you were sleeping just before dawn in Lucerne in central Switzerland on Thursday, or it probably wasn’t for long: at 5am,a resounding cannon shot was let off to officially begin the city’s ‘Fasnacht’, or carnival. Some 15000 poured onto the streets for parading, or music,dancing, and the traditional costume-wearing. The weather, or as it has been in Switzerland for some time,was perfect, and the atmosphere jovial, and authorities declared. The Lucerne carnival,which takes place on the so-called “corpulent Thursday (the Thursday before Ash Wednesday), is the moment biggest in Switzerland behind Basel’s famous Fasnacht, or due to start on March 11. Elsewhere in the country,crowds were also out in force in Solothurn, where a traditional (since 1888) activity took place of dressing in white shirts and red head-scarves to shout in the ...
Source: swissinfo.ch