Lindt Chocolate Factory

Last Tuesday we attended the Lindt Chocolate Factory lighting ceremony.  Darren had gotten an e-mail from work about it, but it didn't have much information and the Lindt website didn't either, except that Roger Federer would be there! (The Swiss are in love with their Roger Federer.)  We thought maybe it would be something like the Christmas tree lighting in Rockefeller Center.  The Lindt Chocolate Factory is in Kilchberg, so we took the train down there and walked over to the factory.  Around the factory area, they had set up all kinds of Christmas things like free chocolate tastings, a place to meet Samichlaus (Santa), and of course, places to buy Lindt chocolate!  We thought this mysterious lighting ceremony would start as advertised at 6 pm, but when we got there, the sign said it wasn't going to start until 7 pm.  With a little over an hour to kill, we went around to do all the things they had.

We tasted several types of chocolate at the different stations:

All the free chocolate was very tasty and you can see from the pictures that they are very serious about their chocolate.  They had their professional confectioners making the chocolate right in front of you!  However, as time went on and more people showed up, people started to get pretty pushy to try and get some chocolate, so we moved on from that.  We didn't go visit Samichlaus because he only spoke Swiss German, so he probably wouldn't understand what we were asking for Christmas.  We headed over to the Lindt chocolate store to see what they had.  I think Grandma Yvonne would have bought the whole store! ;)  P.S., the chocolate factory store is the cheapest place to buy Lindt chocolate, so put your order in now for Christmas. :)

We had to wait around a little longer for the lighting ceremony and we weren't well prepared for how cold it was outside, but we managed through it until it was time to see Roger Federer!  We were far away from the stage where we was, but thanks to our awesome new camera with 35x zoom, Darren (the one with the steady hands necessary to get some decent pictures) was able to snap some pictures of him. We had absolutely no idea what anyone was saying though since they were speaking Swiss German.  Oh Swiss German.

Then it came time for the lighting ceremony to start, we assumed, because Roger Federer pushed/pressed/touched (?) the giant Lindt chocolate ball.

So what happened?  They literally lit up the factory with Christmas projections.  Yes, they did actually mean they were going to light up the factory when they said it was the Lindt Chocolate Factory lighting.

Here is a short video of what happened for basically ten minutes.  They put up different projections and played different *American* Christmas pop songs.  We contemplated why they were playing American songs, but I think we are the only country that really has any pop Christmas songs.  Maybe also Britain? Or everyone just likes American music.

Lindt Video

Anyways, it was well different, but I still liked it!  Let the Christmas season begin!