Sechseläuten, the Spring Festival in Zurich

Each April, Zürich celebrates the Sechseläuten, which is a traditional spring festival (as good as we can translate the Sechseläuten word, it means something like "The six o'clock ringing of the bells" ;-)) It is such an important event, that the Monday afternoon is considered to be bank holiday in Zurich (too bad, neither of us is working in Zürich canton... but this year, for the first time, we decided to check out 'the actions')

The celebrations start on Sunday with a colourful children's procession, which is then followed by the main festival on Monday, when people in traditional costumes and marching bands, together with carriages and coaches, parade through the city centre to the Sechseläuten-Platz at Lake Zürich. Thousands of people gather here to watch the "burning of the Winter" by setting fire to the Böögg, basically a snowman whose head is filled with explosives:

From 2010 - Sechseläuten

It is said, the quicker his head catches fire and explodes, the finer the summer should be... well, the Böögg predics us a gorgeous summer in 2010 as his head barely resisted for 12 minutes and 54 secs:

From 2010 - Sechseläuten

Note for all our friends: this is now the right time, get prepared for visiting us!!! (pre-booking and early room reservation may be required due to the potential heavy traffic :-)) Shall  there be rainy weather during your visit, well, then you're just not lucky enough... but do NOT blame the Böögg, he has a few-hundred years of experience with this!

Some more pics on the Sechseläuten festival here.

Spring Break in Zermatt

We ended this year's skiing season with a 4-day-ski break in Zermatt during the Easter holidays. It wasn't really planned in advance, we were just looking for great last-minute deals all around Europe when found a free room in Zermatt at an affordable price ... ok, we have to admit that we did originally play with the idea of going for a few days of skiing to Zermatt, but seeing the sky-high room rates ($$$, 4-digit numbers) for the Easter-period, we gave up. It seems however that someone cancelled their booking and we ended up in a nice guest house with Matterhorn-view from our balcony ;-))

From Zermatt

... and it was THE REAL Matterhorn!! Sorry, we can't stand not mentioning this funny story, every time we remember it, we can't stop laughing... it happened on the Caribbean cruise we had back in January: we were chatting with some Americans in the jacuzzi about traveling, famous places in Europe, etc, when one of the guys asked us what was special about Switzerland; well, we mentioned the most well-known site, the Matterhorn, hoping that maybe this one would ring the bell although we did not want to place too high expectations towards Americans knowing too much about Europe. Guess what, we have to admit, the answer was so surprizing ... and shocking ... that we couldn't really decide for the first moments whether it was a joke or seriously meant: "Oh yeah, we know the Matterhorn - WE have THE REAL ONE in California, in Anaheim" (and this from a guy, who did already travel around a little in Europe). After we realized, he was actually not joking, we gave it a try to explain that Disneyland had a miniature version of OUR REAL Matterhorn, but we had no chance... No comment.

Getting back to our ski break: there are many reasons to say that Zermatt is one of the most beautiful places in the world for a skiing vacation. Let’s go over a few good reasons:

• Amazing scenery

When skiing in Zermatt, you are in some of the highest peaks in Europe. As you go up to the Gornergrat or Kleine Matterhorn you get amazing views of the mountains and an experience overall which cannot be matched no matter where you go. We could relax and just watch the amazing scenery from the cable cars as we were getting ready for our skiing.

From Zermatt

• Height and Length of Runs

In Zermatt you’re also guaranteed some of the longest and highest runs possible. The total length of slopes in all three resorts is about 350 kms, each resort having slopes in at least 3100-meter height, which means runs that are from 8 to 13 kilometers. It is also here the world's biggest drop from Klein Matterhorn (3883m) to Zermatt (1620m) - it took us 45 mins without the last portion of the run (from Furi to Zermatt due to the melting snow).

From Zermatt

• Sense of Tradition

In Zermatt you feel as if you’re truly enjoying a natural experience, as the entire place is car-free and their are plenty of traditional chalets and local resturants serving the traditional Swiss foundue or raclette... you may even spend the night in a traditional Iglu Camp in Gornergrat Glacier Paradise:

From Zermatt

On Easter Sunday we woke up on heavy snowing and a real winter-scenery with all roads and rooftops covered in untouched white snow. An amazing experience, we just had a wonderful holiday (again).

See our entire photo album on our Spring break in Zermatt here.