Swiss BBQ

I went to a BBQ party yesterday. The party was organized by my friends' son's kindergarten. The invitation was written with instructions: as indicated in the map, park here, then follow the colorful balloons to get the the BBQ spot.

So we drove there, found the parking place, and identified the balloons. We unloaded our food and started to follow the balloons.

Soon we realized that we were actually ascending a mountain. We had thought the BBQ spot would be right by the parking but now it seemed not very much so. We ended up spending 30 minutes in hiking and finally reached the designated spot, at the top of the mountain.

I wonder if this is the Swiss lifestyle -- that hiking is just as common as walking to the subway stations in tokyo. It wasn't even mentioned in the invitation that we're supposed to do some hiking after we park our car.

However it was all worth the effort, the view from the top of the mountian was fantastic! We were overlooking a wide valley, green with trees and grass and lots of pretty houses. A family live in the valley and they have a stable there with 2 horses.

The Swiss government sponsors all the public BBQ spots, they were all nicely built and prepared. The government even provides the firewoods for free. BBQ is a very important part in Swiss lifestyle, especially in summer, there are BBQ everyday and everywhere. Even the air smells like BBQ.

The Swiss way to do the BBQ is rather natural.. nobody brought forks or plates, etc. The kids (these are still in kindergarten) collected many tree branches and the fathers took out their Swiss army knives and made spears out of the branches. Then we ate from these handmade forks... so handy and useful! The kids liked it too, they lit up the sharp ends of the branches and tried to use it to kill each other.