There is a very fun event happening in Geneva at the start of December. They are celebrating the defeat of the Savoy troops in 1602 by a woman who dumped a pot of boiling soup onto the head of one of the attackers as he climbed the city walls, then cracked him over the head with the cauldron ('marmite' in French)
, and raised the alarm (
Wikipedia link).
The best part of the celebration is a series of running races on December 2nd (2006). The ones in the afternoon are for the serious people, but in the evening, starting at 6:30pm, is the "marmite" event (
event web-site, in French). My wife and I watched it on TV last year, and it looked like a lot of fun because the thousands of people taking part are nearly all wearing fun costumes
and it goes through the old city in Geneva. This year we are going to participate, and thought that we'd let other forum members know about it too.
The event is more about costumes and having fun than about running, and the course is only 3.4 km long. Most of the time people are not even trying to run partly because the streets are too narrow for the number of people and partly because of the inconvenient costumes
that they are wearing. Plus, finishing times are not even recorded (although there are prizes for best individual and group costumes). Here is more info on the
spirit of the event (again in French, sorry, just ask if you want me to translate it all).
I tried to find some photos to give you all an idea of the event, but did not come up with much from searches on both google.ch and search.ch, but there is one photo on the
event website, and a few more on
this site. Last year, the costumes we saw included Smurfs, a hospital bed, a bunch of grapes, a christmas tree, etc.
We haven't decided for sure on a costume yet, and since group costumes appear to be the norm then we thought that we'd ask whether anyone else on this forum wants to join us (or just has costume suggestions).
If you want to sign-up on-line then go to
this site, but you need to do so before November 1st. You may be able to sign up using one of their not online methods later than that, but I'm not sure.
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