Fireworks and a Bonfire!

Yesterday was Swiss Day, a celebration of the oath hundreds of years ago which is the foundation of Switzerland today. It was raining all day but cleared up after dinner, so we decided to go and see the fireworks which I missed last year because we got there too late. We thought we had missed them this year and were watching people set off their own when the official ones started and we rushed over to watch them. It was kind of interesting, they were in a park, in a slightly open area, so all the fireworks had to go up and they also had lots of pinwheels, which I don't usually see as they don't show them in Australia. They also had accompanying music, which is also different, but quite interesting and really added another dimension to the spectacle. Then after the fireworks, they lit a pyre, which they had set up on sand on the grass. It was very cool watching it burn, wood turning into ashes, and feeling the heat from the flames.



Swiss Day marks the start of the Fete de Geneve, a week long carnival on the banks of the lake, which me and a couple of my Australian colleagues went to this evening. Since none of us are the ride or sideshow game type people, we watched other people at play, trying to figure out what the scam was in all the games. And then there were more fireworks! At home we only get fireworks twice a year, New Years and Australia Day, here they have them three times in one week! I knew about the Swiss Day ones, and I'm really looking forward to next weekend's display, but this was quite random. It was supposed to be a light show by the lake, and there were some grandstands which you could pay to watch the show at, and maybe it was better from there. But what I learnt was that 'light show' means 'fireworks with lights shining onto the smoke in between'. We were on the opposite side of the lake to where the paid seats were, so perhaps we missed out on whatever shapes and patterns the lights which seemed to be shining towards were making, but the fireworks were cool. The new thing seems to be a big bang, followed by smaller ones, there were lots of fireworks like that. They also had these special kind which lit up and just hung there, slowly falling, even slower than the smoke around them. I don't understand how that could work really.



I wonder if it's the same in Australia, but looking around at the people who went to these events, it seemed to be coloured people and tourists. If I were Swiss, I would want to see where all my cantonal tax money was going. But maybe if it's the same every year, you could get sick of it. I was kind of feeling a little old for the carnival already, but then I've never really been into that sort of money wasting activity. Not to mention the fact that I get dizzy from rides. *shrug* It was fun and it was a nice evening to be out and about.