Okay, that may not usually be true of Zurich, but on this occasion, Z�ri Fast (Zurich festival) it was. This annual festival is, at its core, a giant citywide celebration. The streets around the lake at the city centre are lined with small shops, kiosks and stages serving up music and food to the nearly one and a half million visitors that would pass through over the course of the weekend. I was staying in the city with Michelle's aunt and her two cousins. It was her cousins who were our tour guides, and they all agreed that I couldn't possibly leave without first trying Racklet, a Swiss cheese served on a thick slice of bread. While it may not sound interesting on paper, watching the racklet being prepared is. The cheese starts off in a big wheel which is clamped standing on its edge into vice. A heating grill about as wide as the wheel is deep (4 cm) is held over the cheese by a metal arm to melt it. As the wheel is heated, a thin layer of cheese quickly begins to liquefy, but is deftly scraped off by a man wielding a long rectangular knife onto a waiting piece of bread. In what appears to be one continuous movement, this master of dairy arts dices the still hot delicacy and hands it to you. Racklet has a very clear and penetrating smell that allows you to zero in on a booth selling it long before one comes into sight, but it has a surprisingly mild taste which makes it an excellent snack in my opinion. It seemed a little bit of a luxury at first when the man asked for 8 francs (CDN$ 7.18) in return for his handiwork, but prices like these are just the unfortunate reality for all visitors to Switzerland not being paid Swiss salaries.
On the other hand, the Swiss really know how to put on a show. There were free concerts happening day and night on several stages ranging from pop to rap to Samba and of course traditional local music laced with accordions and the occasional alpen horn. (for anybody who has never seen one of these, it is a long, two meter horn. Too heavy to hold, the mouth of the horn rests on the ground. ) After a concert or two and a few hours of walking through the old city, we ended the night by joining the other 900,000 people crammed around the lake at the centre of the city for a fireworks display. I didn't find out until after how much they had spent on the show (CDN$ 360,000) But it quickly became clear that this was the best fireworks display I had ever seen. They had shapes of different colours and sizes jumping out of explosions and towering bursts of light with incredible wakes of white light that lit the city up for what seemed like minutes at a time. The entire show was set to music and lasted for half an hour.
My time in Switzerland was short though. The train ride is normally 8 hours, and we had chosen to travel overnight Friday with the intention of arriving for 8am Saturday. But, a storm the day before had blown a lot of debris on the tracks and we were delayed six hours. After going to the festival and doing a little shopping (chocolate of course) we were left with just enough time to visit Michelle's grandparents on Saturday and to have dinner with her entire family on Sunday before heading back to work.
;)