Fête de Vendange

Wine festival, hmmmm.....  Okay, so maybe there are lots of grapes growing on the slopes surrounding Lake Neuchatel, and maybe they make some wine from them.  But, I have to say that the "Wine Festival" that we were told would be the conclusion to our work week was not exactly what I expected.

In Northern California, when you say you are having a wine festival, you expect the wine to take center stage.  Tastings, pairings, lovely sips of tasty liquids accompanying morsels of food chosen to enhance the varietals and vintages.  Not churros and sangria.  Or even bratwurst and bottled Heineken.  The Americans from my team agreed that it was like a weak version of a county or state fair, but with a ridiculously high number of people.  And, apparently, this is just the warm up. Tomorrow night, four or five times the number of people will descend upon this lovely Swiss town and overflow the cobblestone streets with loud disco music,  random alcoholic beverages, and the wonderful, raucous, inebriated energy of the assembled masses, most of which, from what I can ascertain, are not Swiss citizens.

It is definitely not the archetypal, reserved, kind of Swiss event you would expect.  A Vice President of my company that I had the chance to chat with for quite a while around midnight, and who is a five time veteran of le Fete told me that, in typical Swiss fashion..... yes, tonight was crazy fun and rowdy drinking and masses of overly relaxed attendees, but in the two or three hours after four in the morning when the Fete officially closed and Saturday morning, the streets would be returned to their pristine, clean and proper Swiss state.

But maybe that was what was worth the effort it was to attend -- to have experienced the Swiss and their extended cultural family, at their most wild and crazy.  But, honestly, I am fine with heading to the calm and peacefulness of Gimmelwald tomorrow.