Ah, summer, with its sunny, blue skies, leafy, green trees, and weekend yodelling festivals. Yes, yodelling festivals. My friends and I went to the triennial Jodlerfest this past weekend in a nearby town, and wandered from tent to tent, having beer, sausage, and ice cream (the three major food groups in Switzerland in the summer time), in between checking out scheduled and impromptu performances by solo and group yodellers, bands, and alpenhorn players (for those of you who aren�t familiar with alpenhorns, they are the really long wooden horns that always show up in Ricola commercials). Traditional Swiss music is all in a major key, and it is very leisurely and placid, which befits a non-warmongering country, I suppose. It is very peaceful music that you could picture being sung in the mountains, and it follows the predictable verse- chorus- verse- chorus format (or, more accurately, verse- yodel- verse- yodel). The singers all stand with their hands in their pockets (I have no idea why, but they all did it that way).
All of the performers (and there were hundreds and hundreds of them) were decked out in traditional regional costumes (that, I was told, cost thousands of dollars each). In one region, apparently, the men wore dangly gold earrings in their right ears, which seemed to say Pirate more than Mountain Man. Other men�s costumes involved fitted black velvet blazers with short, puffed sleeves, worn over a long-sleeved white shirt, or ornate leather suspenders with brass cows and landscapes on them. And there were lederhosen, too, obviously. Can�t have a proper Jodlerfest without having men running around in leather shorts and knee socks! Women had long, old-fashioned dresses with laces and aprons and other old-timey touches you would expect. The surprises showed up more often in their headgear. Some had what appeared to be starched, white lace mohawks pinned on top of their heads, and others had large, frilly black nests of lace that were two feet in diameter.
The oddest performance of the day, perhaps, was a group of about a dozen men, each carrying the biggest cowbell in the world, about as big around as your arms can reach, and as long as an adult thighbone. They walked along in sync, swinging these cowbells with each step. That was it, that was the performance: men walking with cowbells. No melody, no harmony, no real performance, just walking with oversized, clanging cowbells.
One interesting thing was that this highly traditional festival was as eagerly embraced by young people as by older people. Twenty-somethings ran around in their traditional gear, singing traditional Swiss songs while sitting and rocking from side to side on wooden benches in the street, accompanied by accordions and wooden spoons. Some jarring reminders that they were indeed young people from the 21st century were that they had punkish highlights under their lace caps, had nose rings and tongue piercings, and took breaks from yodelling to talk on their cell phones.
Anyways, last week I took all of my dive gear and my camera and underwater housing (which I had just gotten back from repairs) to a swimming pool to test it all out. We were there after-hours, and the people in the pool before us were synchronized swimmers, practicing their routine. Apparently, in Switzerland, all of the weird water people come out after closing time, as evidenced first by the pack of grinning, kicking, perfectly timed girls, and then by the half dozen people trying out wetsuits, dry suits, tech diving gear, camera gear, and underwater MP3 players (I am dying to get one of these now, having tried it firsthand). I can only imagine what the people thought when they saw me on the tram, lugging about 50 pounds of dive and camera gear, complete with fins, regulators, wetsuit, dive computer, mask, snorkel, and so on. And the Swissification continues, as I am seriously considering starting to dive Lake Zurich, after a year of resisting the idea.
All of the performers (and there were hundreds and hundreds of them) were decked out in traditional regional costumes (that, I was told, cost thousands of dollars each). In one region, apparently, the men wore dangly gold earrings in their right ears, which seemed to say Pirate more than Mountain Man. Other men�s costumes involved fitted black velvet blazers with short, puffed sleeves, worn over a long-sleeved white shirt, or ornate leather suspenders with brass cows and landscapes on them. And there were lederhosen, too, obviously. Can�t have a proper Jodlerfest without having men running around in leather shorts and knee socks! Women had long, old-fashioned dresses with laces and aprons and other old-timey touches you would expect. The surprises showed up more often in their headgear. Some had what appeared to be starched, white lace mohawks pinned on top of their heads, and others had large, frilly black nests of lace that were two feet in diameter.
The oddest performance of the day, perhaps, was a group of about a dozen men, each carrying the biggest cowbell in the world, about as big around as your arms can reach, and as long as an adult thighbone. They walked along in sync, swinging these cowbells with each step. That was it, that was the performance: men walking with cowbells. No melody, no harmony, no real performance, just walking with oversized, clanging cowbells.
One interesting thing was that this highly traditional festival was as eagerly embraced by young people as by older people. Twenty-somethings ran around in their traditional gear, singing traditional Swiss songs while sitting and rocking from side to side on wooden benches in the street, accompanied by accordions and wooden spoons. Some jarring reminders that they were indeed young people from the 21st century were that they had punkish highlights under their lace caps, had nose rings and tongue piercings, and took breaks from yodelling to talk on their cell phones.
Anyways, last week I took all of my dive gear and my camera and underwater housing (which I had just gotten back from repairs) to a swimming pool to test it all out. We were there after-hours, and the people in the pool before us were synchronized swimmers, practicing their routine. Apparently, in Switzerland, all of the weird water people come out after closing time, as evidenced first by the pack of grinning, kicking, perfectly timed girls, and then by the half dozen people trying out wetsuits, dry suits, tech diving gear, camera gear, and underwater MP3 players (I am dying to get one of these now, having tried it firsthand). I can only imagine what the people thought when they saw me on the tram, lugging about 50 pounds of dive and camera gear, complete with fins, regulators, wetsuit, dive computer, mask, snorkel, and so on. And the Swissification continues, as I am seriously considering starting to dive Lake Zurich, after a year of resisting the idea.
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