The Fête des Vendages (Harvest Festival) in Neuchâtel

The Fête des Vendages takes place on the last weekend in September. The week before (this year in 2007) all of the grapes were on the vine and then came the forecast of rain later in the week. Within 3 days, the grapes were picked. Friday night the Fête starts as a drinking festival (for adults). Buses run to bring people home until 4am.

Saturday is the Cortege des enfants, in which the school children on Neuchâtel parade down the main street in costume being bombarded with confetti and throwing back confetti at the people lining the streets in return. Unfortunately, most of our pictures are of the adult entertainment (marching bands) - rather than of the children.

This class dressed as primitives paddling a dug out canoe.

The first of the marching bands. (Notice how little confetti is on the street.)

Synchronized dancers ahead of one of the marching bands.

Another marching band (note there is a little more confetti on the street).

A cart pulled by tiny ponies. The confetti is starting to build up!

A "Goggle" marching band in horror masks. (Note the confetti is accumulating.)

At the end of the cortege, Bryn is left to try to get the confetti off Alicia before she can try to eat it. The streets are now covered with confetti.

After the cortege, the fair ground opens. Here are Hervé and Brandon on the "grasshopper".

After spending a day at the Fête, we took the bus home to see a spectacular sunset over the Alps. The big white mountains in the middle are the Eiger the Monck and the Jungfrau at Grindlewald where we had walked for the previous 2 days. The mountains are 80 km from Neuchâtel - but 3500 meters higher.

Another view from Corcelles of the sun setting on the Alps.

No one was allowed into the house without a thorough shakedown to remove all of the confetti that was in their clothes. This confetti came through my rain jacket and my polartek to find its way onto my undershirt. When I undressed at night, there were a half dozen or so pieces of confetti in my underpants! The rest of the party goers in the family also had confetti under all sorts of layers.