.......Till the Cows Come Home...... (literally)!

Okay people. You thought the cows in India have it good. Well, I can tell you India is like cow ghetto compared to Switzerland. Switzerland is Beverly Hills. I will explain as we go but a picture is worth a thousand words so for starters check this out.

This is literally a picture of the cows coming home. Or more correctly, the cows are being brought down from their summer pastures by the farmers and their families and paraded through town on their way to winter pastures.

This is a major big deal here. We went to Charmey-a beautiful little town in the Fribourg canton (one of the mountain cantons) in the vicinity of Gruyeres (famous for the cheese). The town has a big festival with the usual food tents, craft booths, etc. all over the place. And the parade lasts all day long. Really. There are breaks between the herds and bands and other participants and a long lunch break, but literally this thing begins at 9:30 with the first herd of cows and then ends with a running of the sheep (sort of a tame version of the running of the bulls at Pamplona) through town and ends around 4:30 pm. And everyone claps for every herd that comes by. Only in Schweiz (the real name of Switzerland).





What we have here are some of the older cows. They are old hands at this stuff. They are the ones who lead the herd through town. And you know these cows by a couple of things you can observe. 1. They are at the front. 2. They walk single file (generally). 3. As they do they literally (I am not kidding either) look left and right right at the crowd and you would swear they know exactly what's going on and the fact that they are the celebrities for the day. It's hilarious. And lastly, 4. They have the biggest cowbells.



Note the beautiful Carmen Miranda get ups. Many of the beautiful bovines are adorned with various flower arrangements.

Every cow has a bell. They are graduated in size and ornateness such that the larger, older cows have these massive, beautifully decorated leather collars with these enourmous bells which weigh upward of 30-50 pounds.

The farmer below is part of a group of 12-20 or so farmers, each of whom parades the bell as part of a sort of marching band, ringing their bells in time with one another. Note the cool earring, too. I joked with the folks I was with that this was sort of a funeral procession for the cows that had died the previous year. They would have bought it but I fessed up that I was just joking.

Get your mind out of the gutter. It's a portable milking stool. Allows the farmer to move from cow to cow without having to drag the stool around....it's ingenious actually.....strapped to his ass and goes wherever he does!






And below.....original cheeseheads! Yes, these guys are carrying rounds of cheese. Let me explain. Up in the summer pastures, after milking, they would make the cheese right up on these mountains rather than bringing the milk down. This cheese has a different quality to it than the cheeses made from lower altitudes. And by name it would be known as the cheese name followed by d'Alpage (ie, made in the Alps). These guys would carry the cheese down on these handy wooden carriers so they would be able to hike the strenuous and occasionally tricky trails down the Alps into their towns