My birthday came and went in peace, and I am now 26. Oof. Celebrated on the actual day with dinner out with a few friends, and had a waiter who spoke Chinese. I think he was just as pleased to find someone to speak Chinese with as I was to be able to communicate with someone in complete sentences.
Saturday was the Street Parade. It’s no wonder that the Street Parade comes only once a year. It is a huge event, equally interesting and exhausting. About 1 million people descended on Zürich for the city-wide party, which is a lot, considering that the normal population of Zürich is under 350,000. The Swiss are nothing if not efficient. They can assemble huge scaffolds, speaker systems, stages, and other equipment as if by magic, and then spirit them away again when they are no longer needed. A poll conducted by a local paper indicated that at least a quarter of the people at the Street Parade were on drugs ranging from pot to Ecstasy to coke, which may explain the craziness of the day. And this is a family event.
Starting at about 10 on Saturday morning, there were speakers blasting techno music all around town, and by 3 in the afternoon, they had reached full volume, meaning that I could feel my building shaking. I ventured forth into the city for the Parade with 5 Swiss friends, and it was a mix of Mardi Gras, an outdoor rave, Gay Pride Day, and Halloween. People were dressed up or undressed, with punked out hair and body paint, and there was ear-shattering noise coming from the 30-odd floats blasting music from their on-board DJs, and from the many parties scattered around town, in every square and alley, and even in the main train station. From a distance, all you could hear was a huge, constant roar, which became more defined if you were close to a float or a street party. They were pumping water from the lake over the crowds in one area, and there was a foam-filled dance floor, sponsored by (who else but) a shampoo company. The floats snaked through the crowds until about 10 pm, and then everyone headed to any of dozens of parties in the city that lasted until noon on Sunday. My friends and I went to Club Q, and called it a night around 4. An almost overwhelming spectacle, but lots of fun.
Perhaps the funniest thing I saw that day was at around 7 pm, when the floats and crowds were still packing the streets. The ground was paved with bottles and litter, with people constantly adding to the mess. A troop of street cleaners was already dutifully walking the street with trash bags in hand, picking up bottles to recycle and trash to discard. It seemed like such an exercise in futility, and charmingly premature. Still, the next morning, there was hardly a trace of the litter generated by a million people, so they must have done something right. The funniest sound was perhaps the mix of the roaring street parties and the church bells calling people in for 7 o’clock Mass. The two sets of sounds were equally cacophonous, and amusing in their juxtaposition.
Sunday morning, I went to get some brunch at a sidewalk café with a view of a quiet street and a church that was about 50 meters away. I sat there recovering from sleep deprivation, eating my brunch, when all of a sudden, the church woke up and set all of its bells ringing in full force, calling its congregation in to do penance for their debauchery at 11 o’clock Mass. The other churches joined in, and for 15 minutes I sat there, assaulted by bells from all sides.
Some pictures are up, including some pictures of Zürich, some of the Street Parade, some of people I know here, and a couple of silly ones of things that amused my very mature self...
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