Swiss Christmas Party, take one

The other night we went to a Christmas party thrown by the language school where my husband is taking German classes. The party was held at a Mexican restaurant here in Zurich (in case you’re wondering what Mexican food in Zurich is like, click here), and was attended by around 80 adult students of this language school, who hailed from all over the world.

I point out that these were adult students because the party itself felt like it was planned for a bunch of 8-year-olds. I’m convinced that whoever organized this evening started out with the following assumption: because these foreigners speak German like children, surely they must have the same taste in entertainment…

The entertainment for the evening was a magician. A bad magician. A bad magician who thought he was funny. The audience had no idea if he was funny, because he did the first half of his act in Swiss German, a language that almost no one there could understand. About halfway through the show someone must have clued him in to this, because he switched to High German (which did not necessarily improve the show). To give you an idea of how bad this magician was, his grand finale involved ripping up a tissue, wadding it into a ball in his hand, and then hocus pocus it was all in one piece again. The wonder!

But still, I felt sorry for the guy. He was young and obviously nervous. I’m thinking he was just an apprentice magician (I’m sure there’s such a thing as magician apprenticeships here – they have apprenticeships for everything).

After tricking the audience into standing up and clapping for him (perhaps his most successful trick), the magician magically disappeared and was replaced by Santa (Samiclaus in Zurich) and his helper, Schmutzli. They made two members of the audience come up on stage and dress up like a donkey, since they had ‘forgotten’ theirs (in Switzerland, Samichlaus always travels with a donkey and at least one Schmutzli).

Then they all went around the room handing out little bags of peanuts, cookies, and chocolates to everyone there, as Samichlaus and Schmutzli are known to do. So at least we got a little Christmas booty as a reward for sitting through that magic show.