Image: © H.S
Author: H.S
In my life I’ve seen many peoples and have been to many places, but I’ve never been to a place with as many people as the Fête des vendanges in Neuchâtel.
I must try and carefully chose my words, and hope through telepathic shock & excitement you see in your mind the exact ekphrasis of it:
From far away, from my white 2000s apartment complex which dominates the city scraping the black sky at night up above, you can hear in the thick coarse foggy night the festival calling.
The city becomes unrecognizable – the entire old city center, pedestrian, gets swallowed in a black mass of people like black petals of chocolate in dough – stands are erected, tents, stages for music, food stands of all nationalities vying for the odorous control of the streets –
The stands!
Each political party has their stand selling the ever-present democratic beer – you can see the left & right wing and the drunks who made it their civic duty to go back & forth trying to decide politically who’s got the best beer – the results of these great inebriated deambulations will influence the next election.
The green stand of the UDC Green-clad in their traditional Swiss clothing, blue jeaned & behatted, but too expensively wrist-watched and smelling of expensive cologne, making them seem like insurers and accountants mascarading as working class.
The blue-clad liberals looking like economics & business students, just slightly too neat for the bacchanal of the streets before them.
The socialists, red-clad motley crew with colorful posters all over the wall of the stand – Tattooed cool cats and the only women serving.
The communists not here this year. But I remember once in La-Chaux-de-Fonds they served Sagres or SuperBock which are THE working-class Portuguese beer.
And you have to shout to order because of the insane tittle-tattle of speakers –
Listen! the whole of Latin-America blasting their enchiladas with decibels which I assume adds flavor – giving the tortillas tinnitus.
Greasy American grub, and here and there the gentrified hipster vegan burger that coast 25 bucks with no fries which costs extra.
Afro-beats ringing in backstreets, for they have the worst locations – but shoulder-to-shoulder they dance, the drunk red-faced Swiss passers-by and the black Swiss busting out moves for their families and friends.
All of this just under windows of the old city center – old crones crowned above waiting at their balconies for 10pm sharp – they shout that the music should stop but they keep pushing it to later and later but the police is coming! A stampede on those backstreets broke my nose one year!
Rock bands playing live at big venues which blocks the arteries of streets like cholesterol does the heart of man.
Jazz joints at the periphery, near wooden temporary chalets in which you get local absinthe, the green gold whose drops are mined from the Val-De-Travers – the green fairy, who watches over all of us in this canton and we love her.
Chiller atmosphere there, more mature – the jazz bands are playing for 50 years old dads and moms who let their children roam around the crazy night.
The rap stage! Usually the main plaza is home to the buzz of buses, busy bees yellow-painted in my memories and following their comrades through the streets, but this weekend is the festival’s and so the buses must go.
So the rap stage in the middle of it and DJ blasting the latest American trends – and if you wanna see fights you go there.
Once I saw a woman dragging another by the hair while she herself was getting hammer-punched in the face repeatedly by another dude – that’s where you go to get punched in the face.
And the main stage and stand – in the middle of the middle of the heart of the heart of the center of the center of the city – right by the public library unrecognizable and unseen behind the huge stage that’s in fact three smaller stages linked together and interrupted by bars, and that’s where they blast (quote) classic (unquote) tunes that everybody knows and in drunken revelries sings with no effort put in harmonies or pronunciation or in fact volume.
Everyone SCREAMING not singing – arms interlocked and dancing a mad cadenza – songs by groups like Indochineeverybody singing the lyrics –
The bar underneath the stage besieged between tunes – and the DJ expertly doing whatever, here a classic, then a pop-song, then reggaeton, back to known tunes, and so on and so forth – the music blasting everywhere at everyone, your chest vibrates from the bass, your heart feels trapped in its cage as the ribs shake and shatter and you feel the music physically booming in your heart.
And the funfair! while the west and center of the old town are blackened and moisten by beer-&-wine drinkers & pukers, in the east you have the funfair –
The colorful light bulbs dotting the attractions which get lost in the air and bedazzles the water during the night –
The funfair is just above the harbor so you see the dark mass of the lake interrupted by fog which makes it a sea of darkness, but before the wall of clouds that darkens the night you have the many-jeweled water and its rainbow reflection of the funfair –
The water in the dark, slimy and gooey, captures the light voraciously.
The funfair with its unimpressed and bored looking Romani people talking French with impenetrable accents, nodding their head “no” to 8 yrs old children when they ask if they can still get a small prize if they missed the target by so little?
Grimy, dirty, colorful, gaudy – good fun but watch your pockets!
Churros covered in Nutella passing by in children’s hands, you just smell the fragrance and you go get one too –
Couples trying to win the big unicorn or dolphin plushy at a rifle stand –
The clerk is surrounded by the terrible beasts of the jungle, all fuzzy and cute –
The teenagers drunk on Smirnoff ice and Malibu screaming obscenities and being boisterous at the boxing arcade machine, challenging each other to punch harder that the last –
one of them hits the bag with his head and they scream laughing –
Another uses his elbow –
“Wow I got 8000 points” “Ah yeah? Well, I just got 8200, pussy!” “Ah yeah? I’ll show you!” and they spend coin after coin trying to beat each other.
Cotton candy flying in the wind as children lose control of it, or lose it to the drizzle that diminished the calm.
I had great sad dates after the Fête des vendanges had ended at the funfair, when everyone is gone and the weather is gray and the wind is blowing and the sad reflection on the thick puddles breaks your heart but you heal it with grease and cinnamon.
So many things I’ve not talked about!
The way the evangelical church on the street that leads to the train station tries to evangelize the drunkard rats of the night by giving them orange juice and sandwiches –
The way you see so much blood, vomit, sperm, shit, and all other human fluids spilling in the streets but everybody wallows in pig-like happiness –
The way you lose your wallet –
The way your ears ring –
The way you’d make out with four people you don’t know (with tongue) just because they liked the way you danced –
The way you’d be drunk one night to the point of not remembering and still go the next morning to get a caramel crepe –
The way that on Saturday night people from other cantons come and that’s when you can see knife fights by the fog-lost lake –
The way you see children, as young as thirteen binging for the first time and staggering along with their friends one on each side – getting their first binge first kiss first love first heartbreak first puke and first pickpocket –
The way you see & lose everybody there every hour or so, going to a stand with one group of friends, seeing your parents on the way, losing your friends, seeing your high-school sweetheart with her friends and hanging out with them, meeting a bunch of cool Frenchmen and dance, losing them too, meeting a girl and making out, losing her to the great sea of people, seeing your initial friends finally at 2 AM by the kebab stand eating and going back to do it all over again!
THAT’S IT! The Fête des vendanges, but you have to live it with wine in your belly, music in your feet, beer in your hand, and stars in your eyes.
Comments by the jury:
“The writer brings the Fête des vendanges to life on the page. The reader feels a little drunk by the end, is pleased not to have been punched and, with ears ringing, would also appreciate a kebab.”
“Very beautiful use of language, I think it renders the atmosphere really nicely in an almost oneiric way, and the depiction of all the different people and things was done in a very level-headed manner, which I thought was nice.”
