L'Escalade

What are soldiers doing in strange clothes and weapons outside Calvin's Church? It is the L'Escalade.

407 years ago, or so the story goes, Mère Royaume was happily adding root vegetables to her soup pot when she heard a noise. Investigating, she saw French soldiers scaling the wall of the Vielle Ville. She dumped the scalding soup, pot and all on them, raised the alarm, and the Genevois beat them back. Each year the event is celebrated in a fête that recreates some of the events. The Vielle Ville is turned back in time. Chocolate shops sell the soup pot filled with marzipan vegetables.

Vin chaud is sold everywhere as is hot vegetable soup.Usually the weather is so cold, like this year's fête and so windy (trees were dancing and white caps covered the lake) that the warm beverages are more than welcomed.

Exhibitions like this showing how the iron mongers worked with giant bellows dot the cobblestoned street. The street where the iron ongers once worked and lived is to the right.

People dress in epic clothes. Children dress in costume (although what Indians and spacemen have to do with the attack confuses me). The kids sing the Escalade song for which the listeners are expected to and do give coins. Drummers and fifers play music as they march through the streets, and Yankee Doodle Dandy even if it is an anachronism, has the right spirit.

For the only time during the year, the secret passageways are opened under the city for tours. Speeches and parades mark the event and communes around Geneva offer free vegetable soup and festivities to their citizens.