Ten quirky Swiss festivals

You can’t fail to encounter an alphorn on a meander through rural Switzerland. Resembling a cross between an over-sized pipe and a didgeridoo, it’s usually played by men in traditional dress during village festivals. Each year in the Valais town of Nendaz, 200 of them battle it out in an international alphorn festival (now rather unromantically called the Valais Pure Drink Festival) with 12,000 spectators turning up to enjoy the music, dancing and flag waving. You can even have a go at playing an alphorn yourself. This year’s takes place on 24-26 July.

Tourism officials may have billed it the most boring village in Switzerland, but Ermatingen is a flurry of activity three weeks before Easter when it celebrates the Groppenfasnacht, a carnival bowing down to the local Gropp fish. The festival has its roots in medieval times, when each spring the village’s fishermen would celebrate the thawing of the local lake and the resumption of fishing. Not content with just one quirky event, Ermatingen last year attempted to throw off its boring reputation by organising Switzerland’s first stone-skimming championships. Er, they might want to rethink that one.

The Engadine village of Scuol only gets a couple of hours of sunlight in winter, as it’s surrounded by high peaks, and the lack of light obviously turns local residents bonkers, given their annual winter festival. On the first Saturday in February the village’s schoolkids get together to build the Hom Strom, a giant straw man. The effigy remains under close guard until 8pm (in previous years rival villages have tried to sabotage it) at which time it is set on fire, supposedly chasing away winter and welcoming spring.