Sechseläuten: The Best Swiss Holiday

Last Monday (the third Monday in April) was Zürich's spring festival called Sechseläuten, which means "the bells ringing at 6 o' clock" in Swiss German.  In honor of the winter ending, all the guilds come together in a parade and then burn the Böögg, the snowman, in a big bonfire at 6 pm.  Each of the guilds take turns riding around the bonfire until the snowman's head explodes/burns away (the snowman is filled with firecrackers).  How quickly it takes for the snowman's head to explode signals how hot the summer will be.  This is basically Zürich's version of Groundhog Day, but WAY better.

One of the best parts of this festival is that it started 700 years ago!  American holidays are babies compared to how long this holiday has been around.  Since 1336, working men (no women allowed until 20 years ago...) in the Zürich area have been grouped by profession (I think) into units called guilds.  In true Swiss fashion, the guilds had organized specific working hours for it's members: during the winter, work was done until the sun went down.  However, in spring and summer here, the sun doesn't set until 8 or 9 pm, so the end to the working day was set for 6 pm.  Therefore, the spring festival began as a celebration to having some daylight left after working hours.  Those same guilds are very much alive and well today, though I don't know who the members are.  The tradition involving burning a snowman started somewhere the 18th or 19th century, but was officially added to the Sechseläuten festivities in 1902.

All last week, Zürich started getting into the spirit of the holiday by putting out the Zürich canton and guild flags. A canton is like a state, except with a lot more governing power.  The Swiss have as much cantonal pride as they have national pride.

Grossmünster was decked out with the flag of the Zürich canton

The flags of each of the guilds in Zürich

Sprüngli even got into the spirit by making this snowman cake

On Sunday, the day before the holiday, they have a children's parade where all the children dress up in traditional Swiss outfits from all different eras.  Darren was (and is) out of town on a business trip, so I headed out on my own to see the children's parade.  During all these festivities I was grateful we live very close to downtown and I didn't have to worry about parking/take a train to get to anything.  This is one of the many reason why I love living in cities.

Bahnhofstrasse (the main shopping street) was lined with guild flags

The Swiss flag, the only national flag that is square

The parade went in order from oldest styles of dress to newest, with each era designated by a sign one of the children would hold.  Thousands of children participated and each of them wore a handmade costume.  I can't imagine who had to put all of those together.  I felt kind of bad for the kids though, since they made them walk the parade route twice (maybe three times?) and it was a hot day to be wearing heavy clothes.  Most of them seemed to do okay, though.  Below are pictures from the parade.  I kept moving around to try and find a better spot (the benefit of being by yourself), so that's why these shots are all in different places.

A group of children wearing Renaissance-era clothing

A horse and carriage led this group of children

Group of girls in farm dresses

Early 20th century attire for women

After all children with styles of Swiss clothing went by, the parade had a section for children from different countries around the world.  This part of the parade highlights what an international city Zürich is.  They obviously had a lot of other European countries, some Asian countries, and a few North African and Middle Eastern countries.  I took pictures of other countries besides Portugal, but this post is already getting long.

This one's for you, Papa.

At the end of the parade, they wheeled around the actual snowman they were going to burn the next day.  My camera had died at this point, so this is a picture from my phone.

Sorry, Böögg, you've only got one more day to live

The next day, on Monday, was the official guild parade and burning of the snowman.  Most people got a  half-day off from work, so by 1 or 2 pm, downtown Zürich was packed.  Before the parade started, I went over to see the snowman.  At 1 pm, they were still working on getting the woodpile stacked up to the snowman.

I met up with my friend, Michelle, and we found a great open spot to stand and watch the parade.  It started right at 3 with all 26 of the guild flags.  Neither Michelle nor I knew what all the guilds were, so sometimes we had fun making up what we thought their profession was.  Below are pictures from the parade and my guesses as to what is going on.

The parade began with Roman soldiers.  Maybe because the area was first controlled by the Romans?

One guild where everyone wore tall hats

I married into this guild

The tailor guild

The castle guild?

The winemaker guild, parade-watchers would run out and give people they knew flowers and kisses

"Zunft" means guild

The parade was so long.  Seriously, it was 3.5 hours!  The parade was still going even when everyone wasn't watching because they had started burning the snowman.  At 5 o' clock, Michelle and I left our parade-watching spot to go over to the snowman.  We sat on the street and talked for an hour and then right at 6, they lit the pyre.  We had an unobstructed view of the pyre when we first got there, but as more people came in the area, we got shuffled around and so my pictures all ended up with some street signs in them.  Oh well.  I'm happy with my pictures, though.  With the combination of 35x zoom, image stabilizer, and rotating screen, I just just hold my camera right over my head and take some good pictures.  Canon Powershot, you were a good buy.

Our view of the snowman before everyone pushed their way in and moved us around

As the pyre started to burn, the different guilds rode around it several times.  I tried to get a picture of that below, if you can see it.  The men in the blue coats and top hats are on horses riding around the pyre.

The wood begins to burn and the guilds ride around the snowman

Now the fire is about to reach the snowman

The snowman was filled with firecrackers, so as the fire got up to it, the firecrackers started going off.  The video below shows the snowman catching on fire and some of the firecrackers going off.  Be careful, this is a loud video.  But so cool!

The snowman has really caught on fire and starts to burn and firecrackers are going off

Burn, snowman, burn!

The head exploded, woohoo!

It took a little over ten minutes for the head to explode, which means a pretty normal summer.  One year it burned in five minutes, and two years ago, it was pouring down rain, so they had to spray kerosine on it and it still took 26 minutes.  According to friends, it really was a cold summer that year, so maybe this does work...

Walking home, and turned around to get another picture of the crowd and bonfire

Isn't that the coolest holiday ever?

Munich, Part Two

On Sunday, we woke up to another beautifully sunny and warm day in Munich.  We really couldn't have asked for better weather for our weekend away.  Our first stop that day was to the Nymphenburg Palace.  This palace was built in the 1600s as a summer residence for the rulers of Bavaria and was used by royal family as an escape from their tough life in the city.  Even though the palace is only a 15-minute tram ride away from the city center now, back then the area was outside the city in the country.  All the palace buildings and gardens cover a huge area of 500 acres.

The main buildings and front pond of Nymphenburg Palace

The whole palace is now split up into several different museums, but we only had time to see the part of the castle where the main hall and the royal family's apartments were, which were located in this building below.

The main buildings of the palace

The first room on the tour is the best and most breathtaking.  Below are pictures of the Great Hall, which gained it's opulence from it's redesign by one of the Bavarian rulers in the 18th century.  I just loved everything about this room and I was glad we spent a long in here admiring all the details and the art.  I loved the vaulted ceiling, gold trimming, and the vibrant colors in all the frescoes.  The sunshine radiating in from the two floors of windows didn't hurt either.

The Great Hall

We actually got really lucky because they were supposed to begin some work on the front facade of the palace the day before we arrived.  However, the starting date got pushed back to the day after we left.  The chandeliers were all wrapped up because they will be doing work in this room.  You can see in the picture below in the bottom right some of the scaffolding they will be putting up for the work.  The work will continue through the rest of the summer, so I was ecstatic we were able to see the palace before the renovation began.

Other side of the Great Hall

 We also visited other hallways and rooms in the palace that made up the royal family's living area.  The ruler and his wife each had separate apartments, off to either side of the great hall.  This hallway below had portraits of all the other Bavarian residences.  Seriously, how many houses do you need?

A hallway in the Nymphenburg palace

One bedroom used by the royal family

The room where King Ludwig II was born

The garden behind the palace

Another small residence on the palace grounds when they needed to get away from getting away

Darren in front of the small residence, Badenburg

Me, just outside the palace grounds, heading back to the city center

It was then time for lunch and we all are now aware of how important meals are thanks for Darren's commentary in the last post.  Since it was Sunday, most places were serving brunch, so we had a great brunch at the Glockenspiel Cafe, which was on the sixth floor of a building right on Marienplatz.  We had a great view of square and of the Neues Rathaus (New Town Hall), the Neo-Gothic building you can see below.

After lunch, we visited the Alte Pinakothek, which houses 14th- to 18th-century Flemish, Dutch, German, Italian, French, and Spanish paintings.  The museum was small, which was fine and some of the paintings were interesting, but the museum did not have any signs explaining any of the paintings or artists.  They only displayed the painting's name in German and the artist's name underneath the painting on the frame.  It would have been great to know more about what we were looking at.  The one upside to this art museum was that they actually allowed you to take pictures, just without a flash.  So we were able to take some shots to remember what we saw.

Dutch painting from the 16th century

Leonardo Da Vinci, Virgin and Child, 1473

After the museum, we started our walk back to the train station and ran into an old city gate designed in the 19th century in a Greek style.  When we got to the station, we decided to take a earlier train home because we didn't want to get home really late after a long weekend.  We literally made this decision ten minutes before the train left and just got on the train, sat down, and off we went.  Even though train travel can be a lot longer, it is so refreshing to get on any train you want and pick whatever seat you want.  You can even store all your luggage at the train station all day in lockers, so you can just grab your stuff and go.

Propylaea

That was our whirlwind trip to Munich!  There was a lot more to see that we didn't get to, but we were happy with what we did.  More posts to come this week, including a unique Swiss holiday I celebrated yesterday!

Weekend in Munich (pt 1)

Greetings to the 3 or 4 of you who actually read this blog semi-regularly. :) About 7 months after she started writing this blog, and just over 5 months from the time that we arrived together in Zurich, Amanda has finally succeeded in cajoling me into writing a blog post to demonstrate to everyone that this is a joint effort between us. She's done a great job chronicling our activities here so far, so I'll oblige her and contribute some content. (In fact she has assigned me a backlog of posts that I'm still supposed to write -- regarding the mobile conference that I attended in Barcelona back in February, and the Geneva auto show, and my more recent work trip to Moscow -- but for now this one will have to suffice.)

Back when we made the decision to come to Switzerland, Amanda and I agreed to make an effort to take the best possible advantage of our time here by traveling regularly to see the sights around us in Europe. I'm not gonna lie -- these days, I'd just as soon spend most weekends hanging out on the couch at home, since a week worth of juggling tasks at work can leave me fairly drained. But Amanda continually prods me to commit to various weekend trips, and she's become much more adept herself at planning itineraries and working out travel arrangements, which lightens the load a bit. This past weekend was a particularly good one to take off, as it was time for the church's semi-annual General Conference and so we didn't have to worry about our usual teaching responsibilities on Sunday morning. (We decided to watch conference sessions later this week, both because the live online streams can be a little finicky and because the sessions get started fairly late at night here.)

For this weekend, we agreed to pay a visit to Munich, the largest German city that's within a few hours' train ride of Zurich. On Friday afternoon, I took off from work a few minutes earlier than usual, stopped by the house to grab our bags, and Amanda and I headed down to the train station. The train ride was pretty uneventful, though it's always a little awkward to sit facing total strangers for ~4 hours while your feet and knees periodically bang into each other in the space between the seats. Our hotel was just down the street from the train station; we crashed there with cell phone alarms set earlier than we usually get up on weekday mornings. (So much for a restful and relaxing weekend excursion.)

The first stop on the itinerary for Saturday was the Deutsches Museum, which is billed as "the largest museum of technology and engineering in the world." I can't say that I much doubt the claim: the museum has 7 large floors, with sections on topics ranging from helicopters and cartography to nuclear physics, musical instruments, and pharmaceuticals. The museum's primary claim to fame (aside from its size) is its collection of famous and important scientific instruments used by historical figures to make significant discoveries. The telescope below is an example; supposedly it was the one used when the planet Neptune was first discovered. Other notable technological gadgets from various eras of modern history are on display too: the second picture below shows an Enigma code machine used by the German military to encrypt its communications during WWII.

The main entrance to the Deutsches Museum

Telescope that was used to discover Neptune.  They used to display the one that discovered Pluto, but since Pluto was downgraded from planet to minor space rock, that telescope has hidden in shame in a warehouse out back. 

Enigma code machine

As a person who (somewhat obviously) has an interest both in history and in broad-ranging technological topics, I had high hopes for this museum, but I must confess that I was disappointed somewhat by our actual experience at the museum. Though there were numerous interesting areas in the museum, most of them couldn't hide their age, and there were quite a few areas that were either entirely closed for renovation or where the display cases were marred by taped-up signs saying that the exhibit was missing or out of order. Whether because they were gone or our map was insufficiently detailed, we couldn't find some of the most famous instruments that are supposedly kept in the museum, like the room full of Galileo's scientific tools and the machines that were used to create synthetic nuclear fission for the first time. Despite the huge potential of the museum, I thought the experience compared somewhat poorly with other top-notch technology centers like Boston's Museum of Science or the Museum of Flight that Amanda and I visited with her grandparents in Seattle back in 2009. Since we had a lot on the agenda for the day, we decided to cut our losses and move on by shortly after noon, even though we hadn't yet made our way through the entire museum.

One of the axioms of traveling with Amanda (actually, living with Amanda) is that she must be fed prodigious quantities of food at regular intervals or her capabilities of rational thought and decision-making will quickly evaporate. :) Accordingly, we made our way into the center of the old city in search of sustenance. The crossroads of old Munich is a city square known as Marienplatz (Mary's Plaza), around which a number of historically significant buildings (and now of course countless restaurants and retail stores) are situated. For lunch we used Amanda's meticulous pre-trip planning to find one of the tourist-oriented but generally traditional old sausage restaurants in the old city. Out of the various choices available, we settled on the "Nürnberger Bratwurst Glöckl am Dom," just across the street from the Frauenkirche (details on the church to come). Though the weather was beautiful (sunny and ~70 degrees), the tables were uniformly full, so we sat inside for lunch. The picture below shows a discreet snapshot of the interior of the restaurant, which had a semi-authentic hearty Bavarian feel to it. Amanda picked a fairly staid "Munich city sausage" off the menu, while I went for a Bavarian sausage sampler. This, as it turned out, was not such a great choice -- the primary choices on the plate seemed to be made entirely of fat, gristle, and/or liver, none of which much resemble the taste of Cinnamon Toast Crunch, which of course is a universally applicable benchmark for food of excellent taste. (Bear in mind that I don't really like sausage to begin with, but I felt that I needed to be adventurous to have a legitimate Munich dining experience. Next time I think I'll err on the side of less authenticity.) But the upside of the heavy lunch was that Amanda was sated and capable of continuing on our odyssey around the city.

A view down the Isar River while walking toward the old town

The interior of the sausage-crazed restaurant where we ate lunch

After lunch we took a 2-minute stroll over to the entrance of the Frauenkirche, which is perhaps the city's most recognizable church. (Its two greenish copper domes at the top of parallel towers are fairly well-known around Europe as an icon of the city.) The church is a bit over 600 years old, though (like many old buildings in the centers of German cities) it was damaged somewhat by bombing during WWII and so it doesn't have quite the same ancient feeling inside as the cathedrals that we've seen in other places (like Strasbourg or even here in Zurich). The picture below shows one view of a stained-glass window in a small chapel alcove in the apse; note that the glass is substantially cleaner than the windows that you may have seen in pictures from previous trips. We wandered around the interior of the church for a few minutes and then decided to head up the tower to get a panoramic view of the city center. Thankfully we didn't have to take the narrow stairs all the way up to the top of the 320-foot towers; we just walked up a little ways and then hopped in an elevator to go the rest of the way. The view at the top was nice; you can see in the picture below a birds-eye perspective on Marienplatz, the neo-Gothic Neues Rathaus (new city hall), and St. Peter's Church.

The two towers of the Frauenkirche.  One is all wrapped up for some kind of renovation. 

Little chapel area in the Frauenkirche

Amanda heading up the steps of the tower

Nice view of the old city center; the Neues Rathaus is the large gothic tower on the left side

After completing our tour of the church, we decided to head out of the city center to take in a site almost as holy as the Frauenkirche: the headquarters of the Bayerische Motoren Werke, known more commonly to the American bourgeoisie as BMW. My family is aware of my long-standing desire to acquire one of the fine pieces of automotive engineering produced by BMW, which is headquartered in Munich, and I must confess that it required some self-control during this visit *not* to seek out a salesperson and order a new vehicle for delivery when Amanda and I head back to the states. I was successful this time, but I make no guarantees about my continuing resistance once I've saved up a bit more money and I'm back in car-happy California (or somewhere similar).

BMW World

The interior of BMW World

The actual headquarters building (tall) and the BMW Museum from the outside (the shorter round one)

The first building that Amanda and I entered after exiting the subway was "BMW World," which is basically a giant showroom of the latest BMW models that anyone can visit for free. The unique architecture of the building cleverly conceals a series of small but incredibly powerful tractor beams that mercilessly grip car lovers walking by and draw them in to salivate over bright yellow Z4s and fire-engine-red M3 coupes. The only escape from the building is across a bridge that leads straight to the front door of the BMW Museum. Amanda and I paid our 12 euros each and headed in. I was a bit skeptical when we entered that Amanda would get much out of the experience, but the quality of the museum exhibits won her over, despite the fact that cuteness is the single most important consideration for her when deciding which car she'd like to drive. The museum's one minor problem was that we didn't find it to have a very logical sequence of displays -- they were neither chronological nor clearly organized according to vehicle types or other such categories -- but overall we really enjoyed seeing the exhibits of both historical and newer cars, motorcycles, and engines. (Did you know that BMW started as a manufacturer of aircraft engines? I won't hold it against you if you didn't.) Below are a few pictures of cool vehicles that we saw in the museum, including a real James Bond car and the museum's closest approximation to Amanda's beloved Ford Fiesta.

The BMW 328, which dominated its class of road racers during the '20s and '30s.

One of the radial airplane engines that BMW manufactured before it started making cars and motorcycles.

A great ad: it says "A Mercedes can bring driving joy too" and shows a Mercedes car carrier truck with a load of BMW sedans.

A 1989 BMW M3.  The "M" series is BMW's line of very high performance sport sedans, intended to bring race car-like performance to everyday driving.  

The Isetta from the mid-'50s.  To get in, you open the whole front of the car.  It basically has a lawnmower engine that sits behind the driver.  Natural fit for Amanda, eh? 

The actual Z8 driven by Pierce Brosnan for the James Bond film "The World is Not  Enough."  (The movie was fairly mediocre but the car won awards for its superb performance in the film, with special recognition for its built-in surface-to-air missiles.) 

Some concept cars from BMW's alternative energy labs.  

By the time we finished at the museum, it was almost 6 pm, and we headed back in to the city center to grab dinner before the next scheduled appearance of the Hungry Monster. But first, Amanda wanted to check out the Englischer Garten (English Garden), the main public park in downtown Munich. As you can tell from her earlier blog posts about taking walks around various parts of Zurich, she is a big fan of strolls around public spaces, so we decided to make a go of it and enjoy the nice weather in the early evening. The park was filled with people who had clearly had a similar idea: there were probably a few thousand people scattered around the various large lawns in the park and riding bikes and roller blades (somehow the fad never died out in Europe) on the many paths through the garden. Here are a few pictures of the environment:

A (surprisingly) empty path through the park.  

Locals enjoying the warm spring weather. 

Amanda posing by the pretty stream. 

After navigating the park, we headed back downtown. On the way we passed a few impressive buildings, like the Residenz (a former small palace of Bavarian kings, now a museum), the Theatinerkirche (a notable baroque church), and the Feldherrnhalle ("field marshals' hall," a 19th-century monument to Bavarian military achievements). Interestingly, this last building was the scene of the 1923 march where Hitler and his followers demonstrated against the government and came into conflict with the police (leading to a prison term for Hitler himself). Once we reached the Marienplatz area again, we got some handy advice from Google Maps and picked a restaurant to eat dinner. Amanda and I both tried something off the seasonal asparagus menu and enjoyed it quite a bit, though of course we also chafed a bit under that bane of Americans eating at restaurants in Europe: infernally slow service. After dinner it was back to the hotel to crash for the night.

One side of the Residenz, with the Theatinerkirche in the background. 

Theatinerkirche (right) and Feldherrnhalle (left)

Though I can hardly claim to be an expert on Western European cities at this point, I will say that of the ones I've seen thus far, I think they're more similar than they are different. Obviously Munich has some attractions that aren't available in other places, but the feel of the place actually seemed quite similar to Zurich, Stuttgart, Strasbourg, and other such cities that we've visited. Of course, that's not necessarily a bad thing, and in any case you can't see the BMW Museum anywhere but Munich, so that alone is enough to make it worth a visit. :) All in all, I think we had a pretty good day on Saturday. Now you'll have to wait a few days to hear Amanda's description of the second half of the trip... and if you wait another 6 months or so, maybe you'll hear from me again. ;)