Fine wines and cow hoe-downs

Yes, I’ve been a little quiet lately. Travel and social engagements have kept me busy throughout the rest of summer and into the start of autumn. And autumn is here with a vengeance; today it’s only 12C and there’s a healthy dusting of snow on the Alps. But the cooler weather hasn’t deterred festival organisers or festival goers. Over the last few weekends, I’ve attended two festivals in or near my home town, Nyon. One was a sophisticated wine festival showcasing the best local wines on offer; the other was a mountain-side cow hoe-down, featuring pretty much every cliché Switzerland has to offer.

Fetes de la Vigne in Nyon - the Swiss try out
their local drops

A few weeks back, I gathered some friends and we headed into the old part of Nyon for Fetes de la Vigne, a wine festival that features the best wine producers and wines in the local area. Local wines, however, are no slouch. Before moving here, I actually had no idea that Switzerland was such a prolific producer of wines – I thought the climate would be too cold but apparently it’s not; most grapes are grown in the French-speaking cantons in the south and west of the country. One of Switzerland’s best natural products is also its best-kept secret; the country exports less than two per cent of its wine, and what does go out of the country goes mostly across the border to Germany. So little wonder then that most people don’t know about Swiss wine.

But the local drops are great. I’m a red and rosé drinker and there’s plenty to choose from. The good thing is that at Fetes des Vignes – unlike other wine tastings in the area – the actual tastings are free. Plus they’re pretty generous with their ‘tasting’ size, with one old guy at a cellar stall giving my friend Julia and I nearly half a glass of a red to try. After my third ‘tasting’ I was well on my way to getting hammered until we decided to grab a bite to eat. The free tastings do work though; between the seven of us who went, we bought at least three, if not four, bottles of wine. The last one we bought was a bottle of red that had strong notes of dark chocolate but went for a pricey CHF35. We didn’t end up opening it that night, but despite what my parents – who are wine connoisseurs among the best of them – say, we won’t be cellaring it. Why store wine when it’s more fun to drink it?

The festival itself though was fun. It brought the whole community out for it, expat and Swiss, together. Friends and neighbours crowded around communal tables sharing a laugh and a glass – or four – of local wine. I have one gripe though – and it’s about the grapes. The programme for the festival in the local paper said that there would be grape harvesting and crushing. The harvesting I could easily give a miss. But grape crushing sounded like fun. Here I was thinking I could kick my shoes off and jump into a barrel of grapes to crush them with my feet, like I’ve seen them do in movies. Seeing the Swiss crush grapes with their feet would have been a sight to behold, but maybe they don’t have the passion the French, Spanish or Italians do. There was no feet crushing of grapes; the Swiss version of crushing grapes involved putting them through an old-school mechanical press to make grape juice. Never mind, it was still a fun festival.

Yes. It's a cow with a tree
and flowers on its head.

A week later, and the fun moved to St Cergue, a village up in the mountains from Nyon, for Desalpes (that’s from the Alps) – a traditional festival that signifies bringing the cows down from the mountains for the winter. Desalpes is Switzerland personified. The only thing missing from the parade of Swiss clichés was Heidi, and I’m sure that was only because she’s Swiss-German, not Swiss-French.

The festival is basically a continuous parade of cows, being brought down the mountain road into the village. Each farm leads their herd into the village headed by their ‘queens’ of the herd – or those that yield the most milk. The queen of the herd is easily identifiable by the headdress of trees and flowers on its head. Yes, you read right – by the flowers on its head.

The cows also have the massive Swiss cow bells and decorated collars round their necks. Then there are the dogs – I think they’re Bernese Mountain dogs – but they’re the adorable, sweet-natured working dogs, who pulled carts of children in a parade (I have no idea why).

While Desalpes is definitely a visual feast – including seeing traditional folk dancers in folk costume – it’s also a literal feast, with the streets of the village lined with stalls full of food, most of it local and traditional. Crepes, sausages, chocolate – it’s all there.

No Heidi? The next best Swiss cliche -
Alpine horns

It all makes for a cacophony of noise; in addition to the cow bells (which are actually quite loud when you add up a herd of over 100 cows, all with bells on, going at a brisk trot down the road), there’s the most Swiss cliché of them all – the Alpine horn. I can’t think of anything more Swiss – a group of men (with the odd woman thrown in), lined up in a row, blowing on these long, wooden horns, decorated with edelweiss and the Swiss coat of arms. Swiss cliché heaven.

I think there’s one thing to remember for the next Desalpes – bring a pair of Wellington boots. There’s a lot of cows…

Geneva is not a wallflower after all

It seems that come August, Geneva drinks a little too much from the bottle of fun she’s had stashed away in the drawer all year, rips her shirt off, runs around yelling and generally just goes a bit nuts. And I’m glad to see it.

It starts on 1 August, Swiss National Day. I wasn’t here for it this year, but I’ve heard that Geneva starts to warm up for that; apparently there are some events on a smaller scale but most people keep it relatively quiet. I’ll have to wait until next year to find out for sure.

Cine Transat is a rarity in Geneva - it's free

Then there’s the variety of events – concerts, theatre, films – throughout the city. It’s summer, where the city herself throws off her inhibitions and loosens up. One event is Cine Transat, the outdoor cinemas that have the lake and mountains as an amazing backdrop. They show a mix of films – cult classics, newer releases, and international titles. I caught Romeo +Juliet on Friday night, which I fondly remember seeing in the cinemas as a 16-year old. The truly amazing thing about Cine Transat though is that it’s absolutely free. They have gone nuts.

The weekend just gone though was on another scale altogether and wrapped up what is – I guess – one of the biggest events Geneva sees in a year; the Fêtes de Genève. It’s a massive party along the shores of the lake for a week, with carnival rides, games stalls, food tents, performers, concerts; I was pretty impressed.

Geneva explodes in a riot of fireworks
for Fêtes de Genève

However, I was blown away on Saturday night. Nearly an hour’s worth of fireworks were blown up where Lac Leman meets the River Rhone in an awesome display of beauty, perfectly timed and coordinated to music. That amount of fireworks must have cost a – er – bomb.

I was reading in 20 Minutes yesterday morning – that’s the free Swiss commuter paper – that over 500,000 people turned out to watch it. Quite extraordinary given that I don’t think half a million people live in Geneva. 

The traffic jam afterwards suggests that there were that many people there, which is one reason why we took the train. I know that I’ve complained about Swiss trains before but, honestly, there’s no comparing to the Swiss for thoughtfulness and efficiency – Swissifficiency.

An hour and a half after the fireworks ended – 1.30am – and the crowd on the train station platform is ten deep waiting to get home. We were speculating who was going to get left behind, given we knew the trains that usually took us home won’t be able to hold half the number of people that were waiting.

2am in Nyon - crowds pile off a double
decker train thoughtfully provided by CFF

Just a minute late, a train pulls up – but it’s not the regular train type that takes the route through Nyon. In their Swissifficiency, the CFF (the French abbreviation for Swiss National Railways) decided to thoughtfully provide a double decker train that usually does routes to Zurich or Basel.

In just a couple of minutes, the platform is emptied and everyone is on board and on their way home. Until next year…