59. It's that time again

It's Fasnacht time again and the flag of the Spanischbrödlizunft is ruling over Baden from Schloss Stein.

Advent window 3 in 2013

Another Advent window, this one by the Besserstein Wein group. Their theme is wine production.

Advent window 1 in 2013

Here is one of the non-traditional Advent windows I promised you.
Spirits in the heavens?

Happy holidays to all!

16 again

I wanted to dwell on the details of the diorama in yesterday's post. Note the little birds in the foliage: so cute!

We missed Fantoche

Truth be told, I spend a lot of my free time outside Villigen. On the weekends I'm often in Baden (pop. 134'916) where there's a produce market every Saturday except for during the winter. 

Fantoche (website in English) is an international festival featuring animation films, and it has been held in Baden since 1995. Sadly I have not yet managed to attend one. Maybe next year...

Men in funny pants

There are a couple of topics of interest here.

1. In Switzerland it is possible to buy hard-boiled eggs in the grocery stores year-round. They're called Piknik-Eier -- picnic eggs -- in the German-speaking parts.

I mention year-round, because in some countries, during Easter, such eggs are available for sale. I'm curious to know in which countries one can buy hard-boiled eggs all the time -- are you in such a country? Drop me a note if you are, or know such countries.

2. Now about the stickers on the eggs. These eggs are advertising the upcoming Schwingen festival which takes place once every three years. Schwingen is Swiss-style wrestling, which is also called Hoselupf, literally pants-raising. And that brings us to the funny pants in the title. The participants wear "wrestling pants", over their normal clothes, and it is the belt on these pants that have to be used to bring down the opponent.

Turns out that there are also Schwingen competitions held in the San Joaquin valley, in Ripon, California.

For technical details, visit the Wikipedia page:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schwingen>

Memories of Fasnacht 2007 Baden 1

From the 2007 Fasnacht parade in Baden...

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Memories of Fasnacht 2007

It's that time of year again. Almost. This is a photo from a Fasnachts parade in 2007 in Olten if memory serves.

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The wedding photographer

Actually, I don't know for sure if this fellow running to get back on the carriage was the wedding photographer. He had stepped out to take photos of the procession in the rain, so I'm assuming he was.

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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...

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Die Apotheke

Judging by the name of this building (at the top of the photo), it used to house a pharmacy. I like the tiger head sculpted over the oval window. The children's clothes shop on the ground floor was displaying white dresses, which is what the girls in the Jugendfest parade wear.

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After the Brugger Jugendfest II

A close-up of the decaying flowers in the Justice fountain in the post from the day before yesterday.

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Decorations on the Pestalozzi house

The house where Pestalozzi — the founder of modern pedagogy — died was highlighted in the decoration plan for the Jugendfest in Brugg. More on Pestalozzi here.

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After the Brugger Jugendfest

Every summer there's a Jugendfest (die Jugend = the young, das Fest = festival) in Brugg and every summer I miss it. I did manage to get some photos of the now-decaying decorations which I will share with you. Here is the fountain with a statue of Justice that I've shown before. If this LinkWithin widget thing is worth its salt, it should display a link to the post below...

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Guest band at the Umzug

The Guggenmusik bands play in other parades as well. Yesterday in Villigen we had the Vollgashöcklers from Hedingen, a town in the canton of Zürich.

Update 2 March 2009: Jessica over in the town of Urdorf in canton Zürich wrote about their Fasnacht parade on her blog. Bigger town, more variety. Check it out if this topic interests you. Link: Urdorf Fasnacht at Swisstory.

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The Fasnachtsumzug

Fasnachtsumzug = Fasnacht parade. A photo from the small-scale parade that took place in Villigen this afternoon. This is our very own Guggenmusik (aka Guggemusig or Guggemusik -- it's difficult to keep track of dialect words) band. A description of this type of music can be found at this Wikipedia page if you understand German. A (low resolution) video clip of their performance at the Baden parade two years ago is here on my blog: 20070220 Sleeping baby at the Fasnachtsumzug.

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I lost one through the gap

Fasnacht celebrations are taking place all over and our local big one is in Brugg on March 1st. Tomorrow there's a kids' parade in Villigen and I'll try to get a photo to post.

The motto of the Brugg one is Einisch Mee Dor d'Latte. My personal Swiss-German translator gave me some pointers and I used the image on the poster to put it together. "I lost one through the gap" or "One escaped me through the gap". If you have a better one (are you reading this, Local Insider or Peter/Worldman or Barbara or Wellingtonia? Any other Swiss reader I should know, did I miss you?) do speak up.

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Fasnacht flag on Schloss Stein

Schloss Stein, a Habsburg building in Baden. For Fasnacht (Lent), the usual Swiss flag has been replaced with that of the Spanischbrödlizunft. More info at this old post: 20070218 Fasnacht takes over Baden (V).

I try to limit my usage of Photoshop trickery but I just gave in for this photo. It was even more dull than the one from last year (20080201 And so it starts), so I just selectively turned it to greyscale.

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Santa on skis

A Christmas window in Brig in Kanton Valais (Wallis).

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A diorama for Christmas

A sweet little scene at one of the houses on Hauptstrasse.

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