Fireworks dazzle over Switzerland but killjoys want to mute the celebrations
It’s Friday afternoon in the heart of Lisbon and it’s 34C and perfectly cloudless. Mom has just returned from the salon sporting a bouncy coiff’ and I’m plating lunch, which was prepared minutes earlier by the café at the base of our building. Six storeys up, an outdoor lunch is quite manageable, especially with awnings out and a gentle, dry breeze blowing from the northwest. I pour some wine from a little vineyard in the Dão region and consult my phone. An email alert from Swiss informs me that my flight back to Zürich is going to be 45 minutes late, so I check the Meteoschweiz website (the federal government’s weather agency) to see if the delay is weather related. According to various Swiss news outlets, the nation is enduring a bout of summertime sadness due to rainy weather that has settled over much of the country and, sure enough, Zürich is a mix of wind, sun, rain and lightning. Not exactly the most promising forecast for the country’s national day. For the briefest moment I contemplate making up an excuse to remain happily perched on the terrace but my Lisbon stay has already been extended more than once and Mats has a welcome-home-meets-Swiss National Day dinner in full prep mode.
Despite the pockets of storminess across Spain, France and Switzerland, we take off roughly at the same time as advised in the earlier alert but wait, what’s that smell? We’re barely wheels up when the Chinese family across the aisle pull out a massive McDonald’s bag and start unpacking their burgers, fries and other bits. It’s overpowering. Thankfully, the crew are on the case and collecting bags, boxes and Happy Meal wrappers as swiftly as possible. The rest of the flight is smooth and after about 90 minutes we start our descent just before Geneva. There are some menacing clouds in the area but the pilot keeps everything bump-free. As we make our right turn toward Zürich and line up for the approach, the National Day festivities come into view as fireworks light up over farmland, above apartment buildings and alongside small lakes. In the cab to the house the frequency of explosions starts to pick up as the sky darkens, dinners shift to drinks and extra-long Bic lighters click at the end of eager wicks.
Back home, the steaks are on the barbecue and the neighbours to the back of us are in full-party mode. Nextdoor a loud boom rattles our building and for a couple of minutes we’re treated to a very professional fireworks display. Then up the hill there’s the pfuff-pfuff-pfuff volley of rockets heading skywards and a cascading shower of gold and bronze. It’s a bit cold for dinner on the balcony but the light show is too good to resist as both sides of the lake look as if they’re launching an attack on some unseen flotilla.
This being Switzerland, it should come as little surprise that there’s a national initiative calling for an all-out ban on fireworks. To date, more than 130,000 signatures have been collected, enough to trigger a referendum on the matter. While the conversation over banning fireworks is not particularly new, there’s surprise in some corners at how the “anti” camp has managed to rally so much support. With animal welfare and environmental concerns supposedly at the core of the initiative, there’s also an underlayer of the “silence majority” at play as well. You will be familiar with this particular tribe, who feel that there is no room for birthday parties to run late, children to make noise in parks or even dogs – threatened by fireworks – to bark before 08.00 or after 17.00. At the same time, there are no national initiatives in play to impose stricter fines (or sentences) on graffiti sprayers who continue to blanket the country with tags for football clubs or random causes. Noise pollution, bad – but visual pollution perfectly fine.
The anti-fireworkers counter that they’re not looking to kill the fun since drones can also light up the sky and do so in silence. And if you’ve ever seen such a display, you’ll understand full well why they don’t exactly fill the eyes of young or old with any sense of wonder or excitement. Nevermind that most of them will soon be in landfill or repurposed as anti-personnel killers over Ukraine.
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