The beginning of the day was fairly tame. Another stage had been set up on main street, and small groups of two or three musicians took turns performing dirty songs and shanties (this bit reminded me rather a lot of the Renaissance Faire). With the exception of the small crowd around the stage, the streets were mostly empty at this point. All along the main road, however, beverage and snack carts stood waiting.
I returned home for maybe an hour. When I ventured back out (despite the enormous snowflakes and drizzling rain, which, in Bern, are capable of falling simultaneously) I found a parade.
All of the bands Carnival and all of the merchants in old town marched slowly down the street, looking bedraggled from the wet and the previous two days of partying. People on the balconies above the cheered and tossed garbage bags of confetti out onto their favorite bands and groups. Some members of the parade retaliated by chucking confetti and candy into the audience at ground level (I realized that I'm officially an adult when I got weird looks for scavenging for parade candy). Children in the ground-level crowd celebrated by chucking confetti at each other. Towards the end of the parade, the people and the ground were plastered with it.
Here's what the ground looked like after the parade:
It's been almost a month since Carnival and I'm STILL finding confetti everywhere.
After the parade, the bands and weirdos in costumes distributed themselves throughout old town once more.
I met up with some friends and we all stayed late into the cold soggy evening.
I heard a song I really wasn't expecting to hear:
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