Zurich Street Parade

This past Saturday was the annual Zurich Street Parade. What is normally a nice quaint, quiet, clean city of upstanding morals (by European standards) is transformed into a trance fueled quagmire of alcohol, dancing, nudity and AWESOME. Without a doubt the coolest street party I've been to.

We began the day by having some food and drinks at the Berg. Here everyone got into their party attire, adorned themselves with paint (watercolor paint haha - It was raining all day so it didn't last very long. We then pulled on our ponchos and headed into Zurich.

The Zurich train station, quite a busy place on a normal day, was packed with people drinking and dancing and dressed just about as strangely as they could be dressed. The main hall had been transformed into a giant dance party - lights and sound equipment had been set up and a DJ stood overhead laying down tracks.

We moved on from here, following Bahnhopfstrasse to the Lake (the parade route followed the shore). We soon realized that the hip thing to do was to start chants, sing songs and shout the bass line from Seven Nation Army. Naturally we joined in and even made some contributions in the form of Home for a Rest and some group beat-boxing!

Upon reaching the lake, we immediately started dancing to some music being pulled around by a paraplegic in his motorized wheelchair. We followed this 'float' to a dancefloor where we grooved some more (assisted in part by the slipperyness of the ponchos we were all wearing) and Bianca got in a fight with some dumb fat chick.

When the main part of the parade, essentially trucks pulling floats full of people and stereo equipment, started pulling by, we followed them and danced to the music they were playing. We did this for about 4 or 5 floats which inevitably took us to the end of the parade route. On the way however, we came across the following: 2 men wearing NOTHING but transparent ponchos, a couple doing the nasty while wearing ponchos, 2 topless women, more transvestites than I care to remember, people pouring booze from the floats into peoples mouths, some guys on stilts, and a Swiss TV presenter who interviewed us with a giant pink microphone into which I seem to remember yelling "ICH BIN GUT" which in itself is just terrible. Riley, being the only german speaker in the group, answered her questions which he relayed back to us as:

Woman: "Where are you all from?"
Riley: "Canada! WOOO!"
Woman: "Do you come here every year?"
Riley: "Every year! WOOO!"

I'm sure there was more to that - Riley feel free to contribute! Anyway, while that was going on, the rest of us started singing an awful rendition of Oh Canada and promptly scared the woman and her cameraman away. Here's to hoping none of our colleagues end up seeing that on TV...

After about 5 hrs we were getting tired and hungry so we went for some delicious doner kebaps (my 3rd in 3 days - gaah) and subsequently headed home. Another fun day!

PS: No pictures from me because my pants were too tight :( Perhaps someone else will be kind enough to share some with me and I'll put them up.