Last Saturday we attended this year’s Turnip Parade at Richterswil. Unfortunately it turned out to be a rather big mistake and a terrible experience. Afterwards I wrote a review at the page of the Gemenide Richterswil. Here’s a copy of that just FYI, in case you’re considering going there…

I was at the Räbechilbi Richterswil event yesterday evening with a small group of friends. I’m sorry to say that this was certainly one of the worst experiences that we have ever had in such an event inside or outside of Switzerland. To tourists or anyone else with an interest, we DO NOT RECOMMEND this event.

On the event catalogue it was suggested that at 3 different points in time during the evening it would be possible for visitors to see the lit up fountain at the lake side. When we went to see the fountain, we realized that the whole area around the fountain was fenced off, the entrances were locked and there was no way to get in. Of course the way the fountain is located, it is so that you can see very close to nothing from outside of the fenced area. We expected that around the suggested times someone would probably open one of the doors for us, perhaps we could get a ticket and get in, but no one came. Waste of time and bad organisation.

Before the start of the parade, our small group found a spot at one of the streets where the procession was supposed to pass through. [I believe the street is called Farbweg.] Just before the beginning, a group of security staff went about organising the rows of people standing on the sides of the road. They sent a group of people to find another spot, and organised the rest of us [standing on the sidewalk] so that we weren’t standing too close to the street. So we naturally thought we were fine to continue standing were we had been organised and given the “ok” to stand by the organisers of the event.

However as the procession started going forward, wider and wider lantern boards showed up, and it started getting hard for them to pass the street without brushing with the bystanders. At this point I already started having an uncomfortable feeling. The staff started getting more and more aggressive and rude with us, and at some point one terribly impolite staff member put his hand on my shoulder and pushed me towards the wall, while there was of course another human being between me and the wall behind us. I really had to control myself not to slap this person hard in the face.

But then of course it go even worse. At some point the staff started shoving us down the street, telling us that we could no longer stand there and we had to “go away”!! Well, go away where exactly? The sides of the streets were completely filled with people, who did not want us passing in between them or standing in front of them and blocking their view. And of course we couldn’t go through the streets as the floats / lantern boards kept coming! We were forced to go down on our knees on the sides of the street, it felt like a bloody war zone as we were pushed and pulled to every direction.

There was one person with us who could not go down on his knees due to health reasons and it’s safe to say this did not end well for him. Somehow we pushed forward and eventually made it out of the crowd alive, to our own surprise.

So we were first given the ok to stand at a spot by the very organisers of the event, and then rudely pushed away like a herd of animals to go heaven knows where in that crowd. This was unbelievable. It’s not as if the width of the streets change, how hard is it to come up with an standard for how wide the boards / floats are allowed to be? How difficult would it have been to organise this so that you don’t have to treat your visitors like animals? How incompetent can you be? This was simply shameful. This was an event for which we bought tickets. We only saw less than half of it, and we had the pleasure of being treated horribly by the rudest staff you can find anywhere in the world.

To the organisers of this event, I suggest you seriously reconsider how you organise your events and especially how you treat your visitors. To tourists and visitors in general, I suggest you do not go to this place until they get their act together.