On Monday April 24 there was an event in Zurich know as Sechselauten. Bascially, all the old guilds gather and celebrate the spring festival. It's a huge event, and everyone in Zurich gets the afternoon off as a holiday, woo! There's a parade and some other things, but the big event is the burning of the Böögg - a giant snowman. They set him alight and wait to see how long it takes for his head to explode (which is filled with firecrackers). The faster it explodes, the warmer summer will be (kind of like a Swiss groundhog day I guess).
Only Evan and Richard were hardcore enough to come out for the event. We navigated through the crowded streets and found a good place to view the snowman burning. They set it alight, and then all the guilds rode around on horses (I was too short to see this part though, lol). There was a small explosion, and we were like, was that it? Nope...turns out there are firecrackers all through his body. Eventually thing started getting pretty dramatic, with large parts of the Böögg catching on fire and exploding outwards, showering the crowd in flaming snowman flesh. Finally the final explosion came and the whole head was demolished to the cheers of the crowd.
Afterwards everyone made piles of hot coals from the bonfire, and roasted their bratwursts. Evan and I (Richard had to catch a train home) came moderatly prepared with some budget sausages. We managed to join in on the fire of some swiss teenages (who I think felt sorry for us and our pathetic bbq supplies) and found roasting sticks and prepared to cook our food. Unfortuantly, the coals had cooled by that time, and we only got to have lukewarm sausages (there were pre-cooked hopefully...), but it was still a thrill to eat meat cooked (warmed?) on the burning corpse of a snowman.
Unfortunately, none of us had cameras that day, so I have no pics to post. You will have to use your imagination and my vivid storytelling to form your own impression of what it was like.
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