The Swiss have no such temerity opposing the perfidies of Nature. Unlike us, they do not whine. When they are tired of Winter, they burn it down and then they blow it up in a splendid festival called Sechselauten – meaning in contemporary English, the Sixth Ringing Festival. Every year, third Monday of April in Zurich, Zurichers haul an effigy of Winter, which looks like a snowman and named appropriately the Boogg, into the old town square, parade and drink around it for far too many hours, then they set fire to the 100-foot-high pyre of straw and hay and wood he sits upon. If the fire doesn't do its job in a timely manner, they blow the Boogg up. It's a nasty, magnificent sound that reverberates around the Norman and Parisian style architecture of the Old City and heralds Springtime, whether Nature agrees or not/David Bond, Wallace Street Journal. More here

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