This one you have to see to believe. It is Ground Hog Day Swiss style. Once again they spend most of the weekend having festivals and parades in Zürich City.
Sunday is the children's parade (gotta start 'em young).
Monday is a traditional parade when people in each of the long-standing "industries" dress up in their traditional garb and parade through the city. There are the bakers, the blacksmiths, the wine makers, and of course the bankers. This is the most interactive parade we've ever seen. The participants hand out samples of their goods to the views. We tasted fresh bread, beer, and even wine (the bankers didn't hand out anything). The people viewing all came with baskets of flowers. When they would see a friend or family member they would rush out into the middle of the parade and present a batch of flowers in return for a kiss. Definitely not as pomp as parades in the US.
Then the highlight (the Ground Hog Day part). After the Monday parade at 6:00pm sharp everyone congregates at Bellevue Plaza (where the world's greatest bratwürst is bbq'd, just a side note). All day they have spent constructing huge pile of dry branches and twigs. On top of this pile they set a paper mache snowman.
The unsuspecting snowman on sitting merrily on top of the twig pile.
Then they proceed to pore several tanks of gasoline onto the pile of dry branches. At this point a team riding horses (and of course dressed in traditional garb) starts circling the snowman as fast as they can (wiping the crowd into a frenzy). Then they light the pile of dry branches on fire.
The purpose of all this is to determine if it will be a long or short winter. Never mind that this event takes place in late April (officially spring on my calendar). If the snowman blows up quickly it will be a short winter, if it takes a long time to blowup it will be a long winter. So about 12 minutes into this pyro-fest the snowman catches and his head blows of in pieces (they place some dynamite actually in his head).
The unsuspecting snowman has lost his head, it just blew about 50 meters to the left.
I am not making any of this up, honest.