Zurich's Sechseläuten

Photographs of Zurich's Sechseluten Parade and Festival, April 23rd 2001 by Martin Sullivan (22 pictures, 730 KBytes, approximately 5 minutes download time at typical modem rates, 2.5K/s).

This is Stuff, off-topic and possibly ephemeral.

Martin Sullivan writes ...

I was to start working a contract in Zurich, but I arrived on the day of the Sechseläuten, a festival where the city's guilds parade formally to a bonfire where they ritually burn a snowman figure, the Böögg, signifying the end of winter. This is a half day holiday unique to Zurich, which most places there seemed to take as a full day (including my new client). So, on an enforced holiday I thought I would amuse my self by taking some photographs of the event. I was going to get one of those disposable pre-loaded cameras but this gaudy plastic thing caught my eye. It promised to take four pictures, more or less at once (well in a short space of time, about a second). It was cheap and so I bought it. It's called an Action Sampler and it produces some strange images. Crap photographs, but great art, that sort of thing.

The originals, by the way, are on a Photo-CD and if you want a copy, e-mail me. Be warned though, they're big (500K each).

I'd just loaded the Action Sampler camera in the hotel bedroom and needed to release the shutter. It actually took a photo.

I actually live in an annex of my hotel (therefore cheap). The hotel itself is on Neiderdorfstrasse, which is lined with bars and restaurants. It gets quite busy at night.

At the bottom of Nederdorfstrasse is a large tram station and this rack-and-pinion railway, called the Polybahn. It runs from the bottom up the hill (not far) to the ETH, Zurich's famous technical university (Pascal was invented here). I thought the Action Sampler would show the car moving, but it's too slow for that.

Here's some trams at the central tram station. Again no movement perceptible.

I positioned myself on Bahnhofstrasse, the principal street in Zurich city centre. A large crowd had gathered (and you could reserve a seat on some benches). I resorted to trying out the camera by holding it over my head reasoning that if I jiggled it about, I'd at least get one good picture. As this frame shows, this procedure doesn't always get results.

And then sometimes it works.

The parade is now in full swing and my unusual camera attracts attention, that of a group of little old ladies. My Swiss German is not up to much (let alone any other kind of German), but I try to explain what it does. Happily one of the little old ladies has lived in Val for some years (a French speaking Canton) and she tells me what's going on. Yes the Action Sampler camera is a little old lady magnet.

The parade is made up of a number of elements broken up by marching bands.

As an experiment I try rotating the camera through 180 degrees, and I get a picture of one of the little old ladies (not the one from Val, though).

The parade is made up of a number of "guilds", each representing a particular trade. These guilds all have uniforms, sometimes they're rather stylised version of work clothes, other times were set firmly in the Middle-ages, but most often we're at the end of the 17th Century, with Tricorn hats and so forth. Infact some uniforms consisted of just a badge and a Tricorn hat.

Others dressed in a very folkloric style. Flags were much in evidence.

The occasional lady was spotted, but I understand that the guilds are a male thing.

Not all the bands marched, some got to ride on old (but immaculately kept) farm carts.

The guilds had their own distinctive uniforms. The most distinctive was the guild that formally organised trade between the city and the far east. They all wore `arab' type garb and were preceded by camels, borrowed from the zoo for the purpose.

More elderly dignitaries got to ride in Landaus and other open horse drawn contraptions.

The horse that pulled the carriages were dress festively too, with hat type arrangements.

Here there's a pause in the proceedings and type to catch your breath. At one point one of the bands stuck up a sort of march. Immediately the crowd all clapped. "That's the Sachseläuten March", my confident from Val told me. She also said "and by the way these chaps are Butchers, but they're not all Butchers!" in a sort of conspiratorial way.

Some of the guilds had elaborate equipment of their trade. This, I believe, was a wine press mounted on a cart.

There were tailors and they did a bizarre dance with the clothes irons. It included ironing each other.

This, in my opinion was probably the most elaborate of the guild equipment carts. These chaps were Coopers and they're making a cask. Their cart is equiped with a real working forge. Naturally since this is the parade they all hammered in a rhythmic fashion.

The parade carried on toward Belle Vue and I and most of Zurich followed it. There on Sechseläuten Platz they'd build a large bonfire, which was lit. Those of the parade who were on horse back rode around and around while all the time the bands continued to play.

The culmination of the process is when the Böögg has nearly all been burnt a monster firework in his head explodes. The time taken for this to happen is significant, the longer the worse the summer. This year it took over eight minutes and that's bad, apparently.

As the sun set the parade dispersed. Each guild had a formal dinner in various parts of the town and then went around with lanterns from bar to bar collecting money. I was unable to take any pictures of this, the Action Sampler not being equiped with a flash.

Any how, everybody seem to be doing their best to shift a lot of beer and in the morning when I went to work on the first day folk were a bit slow in turning in. Now there's a surprise.