Laowai

Today we went to a festival that is unique to Zurich called Sechseläuten. Here’s the explanation from the Zurich tourism website.

Every year, the guilds of Zürich and the general public celebrate their traditional spring festival: the Sechseläuten. The celebrations start on Sunday with a colourful children’s procession. This is followed by the main festival on Monday: People in historical guild costumes, 500 horses, 30 marching bands, together with 50 carriages and coaches, parade through the city centre to Sechseläuten-Platz on Lake Zürich. There, at 6 p.m. a pile of wood, on which the ‘Böögg’ – a symbolic snowman – sits enthroned, is set on fire. The quicker his head catches fire and explodes, the finer the summer should be. 

We had to head home before the actual burning of the snowman but we caught what we could of the parade. It was a beautiful spring day and even though we waded through a huge crowd of people the atmosphere seemed really mellow. Everyone was just smiling and having a good time. All the Swiss people had big bouquets of flowers tucked under their arms or in big baskets. There were horses and bands and colorful flags and camels and people of all ages dressed up in traditional costumes. The streets were closed and filled with carnival type stands selling sausages, ice cream, pretzels and candy and toys and balloons for kids.

Here’s the snowman before he gets set on fire:

Here’s my montage of parade photos: 

Bea was lacking a nap and so she faded, faded, faded until she was just dead weight and Brian’s arms were extremely tired.

So we had to head home and watch the burning of the snowman on TV:

 

Bring on the Summer!