Cow parade.

So there are yet many more pictures of the beach and Croatia, but I thought I’d shake things up a bit by showing where we went on Wednesday. A traditional Swiss cow parade. Otherwise known as Alpabfahrt, among other things. It’s when the cows are brought down from their mountain pastures, and they are all fancied up in flower headresses and great big bells. I really really wanted to go to one of these (there being many in all different places throughout the fall) but we somehow missed them last year and most of them were over already this year. There were a few on Saturday, but Saturday was supposed to be rainy and cold, so instead I convinced Brett to take work off on Wednesday to go to a smaller one in Gstaad. Gstaad is a very touristy town in the Simmental region that we’ve never visited before. It was very picturesque, with many very expensive shops for rich tourists. In fact, it was so fancy that the sign for the womens/mens bathroom at the parking lot looked like this:

We got there a bit early, so we walked around a little bit until we found Coop (the grocery store) and got stuff for sandwiches.

We even saw REAL LIVE edelweiss for the first time! They were selling them for something like 6 franks each or something, but we decided not to buy one, because we don’t always have the best luck with plants and we thought we might get thrown in jail or something if we killed an edelweiss flower, however unintentionally.

When we were in the store and I was looking at the cheese, I asked Brett which kind to get and he said, “Gstaader, natürlich.” :) It’s some yummy cheese.

Eating our food and waiting for the cows.

It started out with a little horse-drawn buggy.

Here they come! It is LOUD! Talmage was pretty scared. :)

They all congregated around the water trough for a drink.

And then they continued.

Check out the bell straps—they’re really cool and ornate.

Here’s a crazy, short little video so you can get an idea of how it sounds.

Okay, the cow parade was probably the shortest one in all of Switzerland. I got this many pictures by taking some, running in front of the parade, taking more pictures as they went by again, running to the front again, etc. In a lot of places they’re really big (long) and they also have yodelling or alphorn playing or whatnot, and it’s a big festival, but I decided I’d rather have nice weather than more hoopla. And actually, I’m glad we did go on Wednesday because this weekend WAS really nasty weather.

Hazel wanted her hair like Heidi.

Fun fun fun watching the cow parade. I hope we get to go to another one sometime.