schwingfest

One day at lunch, we started talking about schwingen, or "Swiss wrestling". It is a popular sport for farmers and they have tournaments or "schwingfests" (with one big tournament once every three years). Daniela decided this was something I definitely needed to experience before I left Switzerland and I'm so glad she did. She and I headed to Canton Lucerne for the day.

Schwingen is kind of hard to explain, but it is AWESOME! Its kind of like sumo-wrestling due to the shorts they wear and the inevitable wedgies. There was a really cute old man that explained the rules to us in english. The goal is to get both of your opponent's shoulders on the ground. They wrestle on the "pit" (not sure what the appropriate word is) of sawdust. The winner always brushes the sawdust off the back of the loser, which I thought was just adorable and a real show of sportsmanship.

 

The schwingfest we went to included the extra entertainment of an alphorn player, a flag thrower, and a group of yodelers!! It was so much swiss fun rolled up into one day!