20090802

Calmy-Rey at the Windisch Amphitheater


I mentioned in yesterday's post that the Swiss National Day is celebrated on August 1st. Most communities organize bonfires and fireworks, but instead of partaking in the Villigen one, we went over to the Windisch amphitheater. We had heard that Micheline Calmy-Rey, the Swiss foreign minister would be the guest of honor there.

As a francophone Swiss, she doesn't have a native Swiss-German dialect and so gave her speech in high-German. Below is a link to a PDF file with the text of the speech which I liked a lot.
1. August Rede 2009 (Windisch)

A little background: The Swiss Federal Council has seven departments and correspondingly, seven ministers heading them. These ministers take turns serving as president, a position that has a term of one year. Calmy-Rey was president in 2007.

Notes on the photo: The venue was the Roman amphitheater in Windisch (next to Brugg, see this post of mine from 2007). There was very little light and my camera does very poorly in these situations. I was also too far away to use the flash. The way I managed this image is by making a movie and "borrowing" the light from the flashes of the "serious" photographers. I then made some screenshots from the resulting footage and picked what I considered the best of the lot.

P. S. LinkWithin is having trouble with this one. All the suggestions it has made when I've landed on the page have been really weak...

20090801

6 comments:

Leif Hagen said...

Interesting - did you get her autograph? Ha! What did you do afterwards?

Voegtli said...

Yesterday I was busy in my place in the north of Sri Lanka. And then, there were no bonfires anyway. But I celebrated 1st of August today. By reading Calmy-Rey's speech. And I like it too. But then, being a pure "Freisinniger", I always liked our socialist Ministre of Foreign Affairs.

S-V-H said...

You managed this available light situation wonderful! The picture has so much more ambiance than one with a bright flash. Nice!

Susanne
Sue's Daily Photography

Sean said...

I admire your industriousness (is that a word)... not a fan of Calmy-Rey myself, but probably worth the visit!

Z said...

Leif: That would be very un-Swiss, I think, to ask for an autograph! :-) Afterwards we came home and went to sleep. Yup, it's always a party with us around. Not!

Peter: When you are back from Sri Lanka in November we must get together, so you can tell us more about how things are over there.

Susanne: Thanks! I would have liked more detail in the photo. She's recognizable only because of her charateristic haircut.

Sean: Indeed it is a word. Anyway, sometimes I like little challenges like these, to see what I can get.

Lowell said...

Actually, that's quite a dramatic shot...you solved the problem creatively!

It would appear that Calmy-Rey had some good things to say.

Sure wonder what "Freisinniger" means?