Yodeler Festival in Switzerland

After snow in Davos last week, the Yodeler festival was in luck this year with some nice weather.

Visitors from Canada and UK were here for the weekend and the first evening we watched a movie and did some crafting.

Then on Saturday we caught the train with several other thousand people (they were expecting ~100,000 people actually, I've never seen so many trains and more than double the usual length) up to Davos.

The Yodeler festival is held in Switzerland in a different town every three years. Groups come from all over Switzerland and the world to be judged and graded for their yodeling, flag tossing and alp horn playing. There were concert halls all over Davos in the conference centre and different churches as well as outdoor venues.

You can check out youtube for some examples of Swiss yodeling (probably not what most people would expect). On the first day when we took the train up that it was filled with a yodeling club who sang on the way.

Here are some of the Yodel singers. They had groups and soloists, this man was part of a large group.

And here was a yodeler family. Everyone was in traditional costumes and all the women had flowers stuck in the tops of their dresses.

In addition they had flag tossing (all different ways of twirling the flag, either in groups or solos).

And also there was alphorn playing, a lot of alphorns! I had never seen the short horns before, I wonder what they are called.

In addition to all the concerts and competitions and spontaneous yodeling on the street they had food tents set up and even a horse drawn wagon where they served free beer from the back.

Here is my cousin and her friend celebrating being in the mountains.

On the second day we took the free train up to the top of the mountain nearby and hiked behind Parsenn. The views from the top were amazing.

When we came down from the mountain we were just in time for the parade with lots of music and traditional costumes. What a difference in Europe compared to Canada, the effort people put into parades and whatnot. In Stratford, the parades just turned into a company using it for free advertising, slapping some ribbons on a car and their name on a big sign. Vancouver had more creative festivals, the lantern festival being especially memorable in my mind.

There were a bunch of people in the traditional costumes on motorcycles.

And a whole lot of alphorns!

Also a bunch of cows were in the parade, either pulling wagons or being led. Also donkeys and horses, teams of horses, horses laden with traditional casks, dogs, lots of animals!

I even had my photo taken with the wild man of the mountain, a very traditional (and very common) symbol seen all around this region.