Last night Roy and I went out for dinner in Martigny for a friends Birthday and when we arrived back in St-Maurice at 10:30pm the little, normally quiet town was well and truly alive and rockin'. We had both watched during the week as they slowly set up some carnival decorations and we'd received letterbox loads of flyers about various things happening in town but we didn't quite know what to expect when it came to our little town at carnival time.
The main street was full of people, there was food stalls, a wig stall, a carnival fishing game and even (and this excited me the most) a dodgem cars set. We slowly made our way down the main street observing the locals as they got drunk and had a fun time. For some reason there was a Japanese theme to the whole event, with Japanese banners along the street, Japanese paraphernalia in the pubs and a lot of people were dressed in Japanese costumes. The extent of the costumes was amazing! We walked past samurai's, ninjas, geisha's and we even walked past a group of ladies dressed as Japan Airlines flight attendants - complete with a drinks trolley. After marvelling at the fact that our quiet ol' St-Maurice was no longer quiet, we headed to the food stall to sample some delicious, fried, sugary festival food. We sat and munched on our Churros and watched as people threw confetti at each other and then the Guggenmusik bands started playing. Check out this video of some Guggenmusik that I found on youtube. There wasn't just one band.. there were two! The first band marched up through the street and continued around town and the second was set up on a small bandstand surrounded by drunken, dressed-up locals dancing frantically to the music. Our little town was going crazy for carnival! Who would have thought it had it in it? We're off to Sion tonight for more carnival fun!
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