street parade

Minh and his sister Liz came to visit for a weekend on the first top of a Eurotrip to Switzerland, Germany, and Italy. They arrived early Saturday morning and they were troopers because it was a long day! I rented a car for the weekend and it was so much fun to drive! After making it back to my apartment, and some quick showers, we went for a walk around the city to show them the main sights.

 

By the end of our walk, the beginning of "street parade" festivities were evident. There were a lot of people walking around in crazy costumes. Many of them carrying bottles of liquor. Minh and Liz were definitely in for a unique Zurich experience. After stopping back at my apartment to grab some beers, we headed out to join the crowd. Street Parade is prime for people watching. The parade consists of 30 "love floats" which have dj's, blaring techno music, and dancers.

 

 

This is one of the floats:

 

After awhile, we met up with my friends Daniela and Mariana and some of their friends. The highlight was Minh and Liz getting a picture with a real-live Swiss cow:

 

Getting to where Daniela and Mariana were was not so hard, but by the time we tried to make our way back, the crowd seemed to have quadrupled. We finally made our way back to the other side of the lake after making a detour around the impassible part of the crowd. Here is a picture of just how massive of a crowd there was that we tried to get back through:

 

We stopped on the way home at the grocery store and got food to grill out and had an amazing dinner on the roof.

 

Some of my friends then came over for drinks with the plan of going out later that evening. The going out never happened once we started playing drinking games...

 

New Swiss drinking game we learned:

 

The whole group with our "moose" hands out: