A Day of Improbable Parades

It was finally time, this morning, to put our pile turnips to good use. A few days ago, I showed you a traditional Swiss Räbechibli, a simple parade with school children and their parents strolling down the nighttime streets, swinging their turnip lanterns.  But there's one city in Switzerland, Richterswil, that takes this tradition beyond the next level. They have over a thousand participants in their parade, some marching with their hand-carved lanterns, but others pushing and pulling hand-drawn floats, decorated with lighted turnips.  The city website predicted that the town and its floats would be decorated with 50,000 turnips this year.

Make that 50,005: this morning we woke up to carve our own additions to the evening's spectacle.  By the time we were done, our whole apartment smelled peppery, and our wrists were slightly sore from hollowing out the vegetables.  (In some of the community centers, they have a special drill, just for hollowing out turnips.  Not ours, though, unfortunately)

Alex and Joey had lanterns decorated with their names, Ella had one with a willow tree, blowing in the night sky, and Karen covered hers with lacy flowers.  My turnips had started to sprout since I'd bought them, so Kevin kept a column with his turnip top on, hollowing out a circle around it, just big enough for a few glow braclets: it ended up looking a little like a tropical island, especially when he lit it with a few glow bracelets.  That's engineering. And it was also appealing: Joey claimed it, and we let him keep it, in the name of child safety, and he kindly let Kevin carry his "Joey" lantern, instead.

We had a few hours before dark, so to pass the time, we took our guests to the Zürich Zoo.  Kevin and Karen had read about the daily penguin parade, which takes place at 1:30 on any day when the temperature drops below 50 degrees.  It's been unseasonably warm for most of their visit, but today the weather was cooperating.

A peacock was particularly keen to share Alex's
french fries.

Cold days may be good for penguins, but Californians don't enjoy the chill as much, so before the parade we spent some time wandering through the rainforest exhibit.  We gave the kids a while on the playground while Kevin and Karen walked around the rest of the park, meeting up later for lunch.  

And then, at last, it was time to line the street, to wait for the march of the penguins.  

Doing their best penguin imitation

Our entrance pass

After a stop at home to gather our lanterns and some snacks and cocoa for the evening, we set off for our trip to Richterswil.  We were going to try to meet up with Susannah and her family, but they're much more organized than we and got there earlier: we never did manage to find them.  We, ourselves, left a little before dinner, and by the time we reached our destination, our train was standing-room only.  But somehow, in the middle of all our rushing, Joey managed to fall asleep in his stroller for a late-afternoon nap.

We were surprised to learn that there was a fee to watch the parade, something I'd never encountered before but is apparently common in Switzerland. School children and parents had set up stands next to the train station and along side street entrances to the parade route, happy to sell you an entrance necklace for 8 francs per adult.  I guess 50,000 turnips don't come cheap.

And of course it was worth it: just walking around the town was a delight, with every available ledge and windowsill lined with decorated lanterns.

They even had lanterns strung across the alleyways 

It was clear that Richterswil is normally a very quiet, small town: this is their one big moment each year. Local vendors were taking advantage of the crowds, selling sausages and jelly donuts (the Berliner is a seasonal treat) and glühwein (a seasonal mulled wine) from tables in front of their stores.  Kevin, Karen, and Dennis picked up an on-the-go dinner, but the kids and I preferred to snack on cocoa and popcorn, and so we staked out a spot on the rapidly filling sidewalks.

It was cold, but lighted turnips make excellent
hand-warmers

Joey, still asleep

Ein Nashorn

Promptly at 18:30, a cannon was shot, signaling the beginning of the parade, and all of the street and building lights were simultaneously shut off: a dramatic touch that served the double purpose of waking Joey from his snooze, just in time. We were seated toward the end of the parade, but, as I said, it's a small town, and we didn't have to wait long.  There were a few marching bands, but the main attraction was homemade floats, interspersed with little school classes of children, each heavily burdened with burning vegetables.  Swiss children are scrappy.

Little kids, carrying heavy baskets of turnips

I need to start a new blog, titled "The
Swiss obsession with Native Americans"

Dennis was a little cynical about this parade when we set out, but when the cowboys and Indians float drifted by, Dennis granted that that sight alone made the trek worthwhile.  I took some videos of some of the other floats in the parade, although my camera isn't spectacular in the low light. The video is about three minutes long, but if you don't take the time to watch it, you'll miss the turnip tribute to Amy Winehouse (her silhouette in turnips, with rehab playing in the background), and the float depicting a giant Cervalet sausage, which that was preceded by a portable sausage grill, with people grilling on the fly.  In case I haven't made this clear, the Swiss love their sausages.

Alex, who borrowed my coat, does his
best "Mom" impression. Thanks, kiddo.

They had other clever floats, and everything was hand-pushed.  Every once in a while the parade would pause for maintenance: someone would scream "Stopp!" and the teenagers, who were the muscle for the evening, would lurch and jolt their floats to a standstill so that attendants could replace extinguished tea lights.

The length of the parade eventually got to all of the kids: we dashed through the crowds a little early, only missing a single float, as it turned out.  But Ella needed to use the bathroom and Alex was cold: we couldn't have stayed.

The trains home weren't as bad as we'd feared: they tacked several extra cars onto the regular train to accommodate us all.  Dennis and Ella, who needed to hunt down a WC, took a slightly later, slightly more crowded train, but Dennis said almost everyone found a seat for the half-hour trip home.

Regardless, it was well worth the hassle.  I don't think the kids will forget this evening any time soon.