The Escalade: fire, muskets, drums and one live chicken

We can hardly say we are living on the other side of the world, being barely 1,000 miles away from our home in Penicuik, but there are a few strange customs over here. There is no mowing your lawn between midday and 2pm Monday-Saturday, and only between 10am and midday on a Sunday - they are quite particular about their 12-2 lunch 'hour' and don't want anyone spoiling it with some noisy grass-cutting. If you are visiting a French family for dinner, you should take chocolates for the children but certainly not a bottle of wine for the adults: this would undermine their own choice of wine for the meal they have prepared. And once a year, the patisseries of Geneva are filled with chocolate cauldrons containing marzipan leeks and cauliflowers, which are smashed open by the youngest and the oldest at the Fêtes de l'escalade.

The Escalade commemorates a rather strange moment in Genevan history when, on a cold December night in 1602, the Duke of Savoy sent troops into Geneva in an attempt to take over the city, but was defeated by Catherine Cheynel. The mother of 14 children and the wife of Pierre Royaume, she poured a giant cauldron of hot vegetable soup on the attackers and subsequently saved the city. It's their own version of Bonfire Night, I suppose, albeit with a bit more soup.

The festival takes place in Geneva over two weekends in December, starting with a big run through the city on the first weekend, complete with ridiculous costumes, and culminating with a big torch-lit parade in traditional 1600s garb on the Sunday evening of the second weekend, with a whole host of other activities taking place in between. We didn't see any of the run, although Andy reported back about eight physicists from CERN who had come second in the costume competition: two of them dressed as protons, and ran around in circles before bumping into each other - at which point, a person dressed as a Higgs appeared, before decaying into a Z and a Z-star, which then decayed into four muons... I'm not entirely sure the general public would have got the joke.

However, we headed into town on the final Sunday to see what all the fuss was about with the parade. Crammed into the old town square along with hundreds of other onlookers, many of whom were carrying pretty paper lanterns, we stood shivering alongside the stalls selling marron glacés and the carts wheeling along huge barrels of vin chaud to witness the spectacle, due to start at 5pm. Unusually, the Swiss were not on time. At around 5.30pm we heard a troop of around 20 piccolos (yes, really) tweeting out a traditional reformation-era tune, accompanied by a band of drums and thus began a long line of people kitted out in (not very warm-looking) capes, bonnets, breeches and 1600s military uniforms. There followed: several groups of mounted guards, a cart wheeling a collection of antique pieces of armour, a whole host of men carrying what can only be described as fire on the end of a stick, more men carrying muskets and lit fuses (!) a donkey with a step-ladder on its back, half a dozen sheep, a lady with a live chicken under her arm... and more piccolos. At one point a man said something loud in French, people cheered and then started singing what sounded like the French version of God Save the Queen. We didn't know the words, so we sang God Save the Queen for good measure. Presumably someone somewhere was smashing the giant cauldron (the marmite - interesting to note how our favourite yeast extract got its name, even though the French don't eat it) and the song was in praise of the soup lady.

The old town square as darkness began to fall

On the way back through the town, via an impromptu stop-off for dinner at Chez ma cousine, where they serve the very best spit-roasted chicken you have ever tasted (and the restaurant's imaginitive tagline translates as 'we eat chicken here'), we came upon these beautiful giant wire bird sculptures in the trees.

Unfortunately, it was virtually impossible to get decent photos of the parade in the darkness, so instead, I'll give you some nice photos of the snow that has been falling, deep and crisp and even, over the last week. Thanks to the volume of snow, the ski lifts here have opened two weeks early and on Saturday Andy went up to Crozet (about 20 minutes from our house) and had some of the best skiing he has had in years. I, meanwhile, drank chocolat chaud and did some knitting. On Sunday, before heading into town for the Escalade, we had a walk around our pretty village in the crisp winter sunshine, reminding ourselves how lucky we are to live in such a beautiful place.