So how does one celebrate an event that includes military history, wall climbing, and soup? Geneva's answer to this thorny riddle is the Fete de l'Escalade, a two-weekend celebration that includes historical reinactments, parades, chocolate, and a race through the city's Old Town, which is hilly enough to deserve the name "escalade" (which means scaling walls). The Escalade is one of Geneva's biggest events. Our family, predictably, chose to take part in the running and chocolate portions of the celebration.
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| Johanna with a marmite. They come in all sizes, from even smaller than this one all the way up to models that are fit for Hansel and Gretel's witch and cost more then chf 200. The chocolate portion of the festival involves marmites, or chocolate caudrons. Every store sells them. I bought ours at Migros, which had a convenient 3-pack of some of the smaller kettles. You then buy bags of marzipan shaped to look like vegetables, and fill the cauldrons. We combined this with a Thanksgiving tradition by having the kids put a vegatable in their kettle each night and write something for which they were thankful. We returned to the Escalade tradition last weekend: What you're supposed to do is break the kettle while crying out, "Thus perish the enemies of the Republic!" Then you eat the kettle and the vegetables. I find this a delightful way to celebrate a military victory, and would advice other governments to try to work out commemorative ceremonies that include chocolate. The race portion of the celebration is huge -- more than 28,000 people participate. We arrived in the morning of December 3, having ridden an extremely crowded 19 Bus to the Bastions Park area where the race begins and ends. The park was so packed that we could barely fight our way through the masses of people to the IIL tent, where Luc and Johanna were supposed to meet their classes. They had to leave for the starting line 40 minutes early in order to make it in time. I was very thankful we had signed them up through their school, so I didn't have to find their numbers or take them to the start of the race. Drew and Eric watched from the middle of the race, and I watched at them finish and was able to take some good pictures.   Typically for a Swiss race, Luc ran at 11:50 a.m. and Johanna ran at 12:00, my race was next, at 1:30 p.m., followed by Eric's, which wasn't until 4:15 p.m. Both Johanna and Luc ran 2.5 kilometers, I did close to a 5k, and poor Eric had to do 7k. In between our races were different ages and distances, including the really fun-to-watch Escalade Elites. We also got to see the woman who nearly beat Eric in the Trans-Onesienne. We cheered for her as she raced with the over-50 women's crowd (she was close to the front, of course). The race is beautiful, winding through the cobble-stoned streets of Old Town, right past St. Peter's Cathedral where Calvin preached, and back down to Bastions Park. A huge screen showed runners throughout the race, and huge crowds lined the entire course (which again, typically, we had to do more than once -- I don't know why they like loops so much here). By 5:15 p.m., we had been at the race for more than 6 hours, it was dark, and it was starting to rain (apparently it is always cold and rainy for the Escalade -- part of the tradition), so we did not stay for the Marmite Run, which is like a parade where everyone dresses up in crazy costumes and runs through Old Town. Maybe next year. Luc's favorite part of the day had nothing to do with chocolate, history, or running, but with finding one of the world's best climbing trees right near the course.  Drew's favorite was something that I have never seen at a race before -- nor expect to ever see at a race outside Switzerland -- the Alpen Horn players stationed along the course. We watched Eric's race next to them and enjoyed the music of the Alps the whole time!  |
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