Yesterday we went out for a walk along the Limmat in Zürich, opposite Höngg. At one point we passed a very long queue of maybe 150 people walking extremely slowly (one foot immediately in front of the other), in single file, and in absolute silence. There was also what I assumed to be a rebel breakaway group (well, line) of about 20 walking in the opposite direction.

At first I thought they were queuing for something, maybe the Wipkingen Open Air concert, but they were on the wrong side of the river and all looked far too miserable to be going to a concert. Obviously, there was someone at the head of each queue (a man heading one line, a woman the other), who was setting the snail's pace.

Does anyone know what was going on here?

flash mob?

More like slow-burn mob.

It was the Limmat Art Walk, part of the 'Art and the City'

http://www.artandthecity.ch/de/agenda/limmat-art-walk/

Aaah. Art. Yes, that explains it.

Thanks!

P.S. Your link is broken. Maybe it got lost, or was too slow?

I can solve the mystery, you were witnessing an art walk with famous artist Hamish Fulton, a project that was part of Art and the City public space exhibition. Yes, we were experiencing quite a special walk. Please read more about it in our blog http://www.artregards.com/blog/

That just reminded me of something. I was in Bern a couple of Fridays ago and as we walked past Loeb, there were about 30 people sat in chairs inside the shop window. Some kind of installation "art" apparently.

Swiss people. Walking.

Unless they were naked, in which case they would have been German.

You obviously haven't been in a mall in Singapore if you call the Swiss people slow. While staying there I constantly wondered how it was possible to walk so slow and not stand still.....

Actually I have. But he didn't mention that they were eating

Haha.... or walking looking at their iPhones...

The link seems to have disappeared from the website.
Try this....

http://www.artandthecity.ch/de/artandthecity/

Because they have nothing else to do all day, so it's the only way to make sure it takes 8 hours to get from one side of the mall to the other.

Unfortunately, that link works.

Welcome to EF, Heidi. Things sometimes move a little fast around here, hope you don't mind.

Just how famous is ol' Hamish? All I can find out about him on the net is that he goes off on hikes around the countryside under the guise of "Art" (no doubt picking up chunky government grants), and that he once did a 100 mile walk in four days, which (assuming he walked for the standard Swiss working hours of 8.4 hours per day) works out to a reasonable 3 miles per hour. This doesn't explain why he was causing a pedestrian traffic jam the other day, hobbling along at about 0.001 mph.

Took me a while to get your pun there, sorry I was being a little 'slow'

Again, apologies