Where to celebrate Swiss National Day tomorrow

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If you’re looking for Swiss National Day 2020, click here

So we’ve had French National Day, then a week later Belgian National Day and now less than 2 weeks on it’s the Swiss’ turn. Wednesday 1 August will be Switzerland’s 727th birthday.

 

Here’s a wrap up of ways to celebrate the Swiss National Day around Australia.

 

Australia wide

 

Lindt Café

Although they are not officially doing anything to mark the Swiss National Day, it’s the perfect excuse to go and indulge in all the chocolate your heart desires.

 

The Red Cow

As it’s Switzerland’s 727th birthday on Wednesday, The Red Cow will reduce its shipping costs to $7.27 for everything bought that day (min. purchase $30). Coupon code to use this special is: happybirthday

Shop at: http://www.theredcow.com.au/shop

 

NSW

Swiss Club of NSW

Because one single event isn’t enough, the Swiss Club of NSW is putting on two events.

 

Fondue Dinner

Approximately 100 guests will attend the evening, which will be held at Louis Fairway Bistro in Balgowlah. On offer will be a traditional Bunderteller, cheese fondue with condiments and Swiss meringue with ice-cream. There will also be a raffle (tombola) and a silent auction with several fantastic prizes from Swiss companies and individuals (e.g., Lindt Australia, Zyliss, Joya Shoes, Spiess Australia etc.)

 

The annual Swiss National Day Fondue Dinner has sadly already reached capacity and as such bookings are no longer being taken. Your contact person in case you want to get in really early for next year is Daniel Frutiger, who is the president of the Swiss Club of NSW ([email protected]).

 

Picnic

There is also the Swiss National Day Picnic on Sunday, 5 August. More information for this event is available here: http://swissyodlersofsydney.org/event/swiss-national-day-picnic-2018/ .

 

The picnic is held in conjunction with the Swiss Yodelers of Sydney, an association who have hosted the event for the past 35 years. Prior to this, the Swiss Club organised and hosted this event exclusively from crica 1925.

 

Today, the Picnic event is hugely popular with approximately 1,500 attendees each year. There is also bottle fishing, Schwingen tournament, a petting zoo, performances by the Swiss Yodelers of Sydney, and carnival rides for the children.

 

The Consulate General of Switzerland in Sydney always makes a speech at the event after which the Swiss National Anthem is also played.

 

Due to fire restrictions there are no longer bonfires but outdoor candle sticks are permitted. The children still lite lanterns and parade around. Grilled cervelat, bratwurst and fleischkäse are also offered to all attendees. Some stalls also sell imported and homemade small goods and grilled raclette. Beverages including alcohol (e.g., Swiss imported beers, wines and Schnapps), Rivella and coffee/tea are also sold at the event.

 

The Swiss National Day Picnic is again being held at the Castle Hill Showground, as it has been for the past 3 years for the wider Swiss community of NSW of which approximately 8,000 reside.

 

Tickets can be purchased here: http://swissnationalday2018.floktu.com/

 

Swissôtel – THIS EVENT HAS BEEN CANCELLED

Swissôtel in Sydney will be celebrating the Swiss National Day with a Swiss Cheese & Chocolate Night

https://www.swissotel.com/hotels/sydney/dining/dining-offers/swiss-cheese-chocolate/

from 6pm to 9pm on Wednesday 8 August at a cost of $89 per person.

 

For one night only, enjoy a buffet spread of Sydney’s best cheese fondue accompanied by a selection of all-you-can-eat dips and charcuterie. Look forward to a raclette station for melted Swiss cheese on fresh baguette. Plus, a chocolate fountain with the whole works to complete the night!

Bookings a must: https://goo.gl/3Pe7oL  

Sadly, this event has been cancelled.

 

Even though that event has been cancelled, you can alwasy pop in to the Swissôtel for the Swiss chocolate cake made in-house with rich dark chocolate and gluten-free. Available all year round in the restaurant or in-room menu.

 

Swiss Bakerz

Swiss Bakerz will be serving its Rosti Menu all day long and also have a range of Swiss pastries available, such as Nussgipfel (hazelnut croissant), Biberli (gingerbread with either almond or hazelnut filling), its famous Bee-stings (brioche with cream-custard filling), etc.

 

QLD

 

Brisbane

The Swiss Club of QLD celebrated the Swiss National Day last weekend. Details of the event are in the image below. Put this one on your list for next year.

 

Gold Coast

 

VIC

 

Milk the Cow, Carlton & St Kilda

No particular event for Swiss National Day but their artisan cheese fondues are available every day of the week so they are a great way to celebrate – available at both their Carlton & St Kilda fromageries after 5pm on Wednesday.

 

The most traditional one would be the Kaas Mit Wein Zu Kochen, which costs $20.

 

Translation: ‘To cook cheese with wine.’  

 

This was apparently fondue’s original name when created in Zurich in the 1600’s.  This dish is Milk the Cow’s take on the classic fondue, it features Swiss Gruyere, Appenzeller, Comte & Emmenthal.

 

Go and have a warming fondue to celebrate the day and keep Winter chills at bay!

 

Swiss Club VIC

 

Lampion Parade

The Swiss Club of Victoria will hold its traditional annual SwissKids Lampion Parade at 6pm on 1 August.

Meeting at Federation Square, the lampion parade will travel along the Birrarung Marr.The Honorary Consul, Manuela Erb will also be there. Aperitif on the second floor of the Swiss Club of Victoria.

Cost: free for members, $10 per family for non-members.

RSVP today to [email protected]

 

Dinner

Now sold out but keep it in mind for next year. A 3-course dinner (Fondue) & entertainment for $45 for members or $55 for non-members.

 

Family picnic

On 5 August from 12 to 4pm, the Swiss Club VIC will together with other Swiss organisations in Victoria, SwissKids, host its traditional Swiss Family Picnic at the Austrian Club in Heidelberg. Swiss style food and drinks will be available!

 

Swiss-Australian concert

At 12pm on 8 August 2018, to celebrate the 727th Anniversary of the Swiss Confederation, the Embassy and the Honorary Consulate of Switzerland, in collaboration with RUAG Aviation, request the pleasure of your company at a unique concert of The Swiss Military Small Band and the Royal Australian Air Force Band. The concert will be held at Federation Square.

 

SA

 

Swiss Club of SA

 

Swiss National Day Family Celebration

 

On Saturday 4 August 2018 at 5pm, the Swiss Club of SA will host its Swiss National Day Family Celebration at the Aldgate Oval and Hall, 16 Churinga Road at Aldgate.

 

Once the light has fallen there will be a beautiful lampion (lantern) parade around the oval. The communal tables will be a chance to chat with friends and fill your bellies with traditional Swiss sausages and bread ($2 members, $5 non-members) or raclette cheese on potatoes ($5 members, $10 non-members). Games for children and gluhwein ($2) and free tea and coffee for the adults will also be on offer.

 

How are you going to celebrate Swiss National Day?

Last few days to see Colours of Impressionism: Masterpieces from the Musée D’Orsay

Reading Time: 7 minutes

The Art Gallery of South Australia’s Colours of Impressionism: Masterpieces from the Musée D’Orsay was a major coup for the Gallery and a wonderful note for the then director Nick Mitzevich to leave on before he moved onto the National Gallery of Australia in Canberra. It’s in its last week and must end on Sunday 29 July when the pieces will be returned to the Musée D’Orsay who generously loaned them to the Art Gallery of South Australia.

 

The exhibition looks at impressionism in a different light (pardon the pun). It separates more than 65 works across 6 rooms and across 6 themes, the majority of those being colour.

 

Entering the exhibition behind its mirrored wall, you find yourself in a room full of dark paintings but which despite their darkness manage to express so much. Among them, Edouard Manet’s Clair de Lune sur le port de Boulogne (Moonlight over the Port of Boulogne). In it, we see women dressed in black with white headdresses illuminated by the moonlight awaiting the return of fishing boats. The work is painted with dark shades of black, grey and blues with few patches of white or lightness.

Edouard Manet: Clair de lune sur le port de Boulogne

Another personal favourite in that room is Auguste Renoir’s canvas of Madame Durras. In it, we see Madame Durras behind a spotted veil, enrobed in black. It contains a brilliant velvety black alongside violet-tinged greys and browns juxtaposed with the creamy pinks and white used in Madame Durras’ face and collar. Two paintings of ladies in reclined positions feature side by side in this room: Belgian born Alfred Stevens’ Le Bain (The Bath) and James Tissot’s La Reveuse (The Dreamer). Both are playful with shadow and light.

 

Auguste Renoir: Madame Durras

 

The second room moves into Peinture Claire (which literally translates to “light painting”) but is a reference to the way in which typical way in which light tones are expressed in these nouvelle peinture (“new painting”).  A scene familiar to anyone who has been to Paris is represented in Dutch born Johan Barthold Jongkind’s La Seine et Notre-Dame de Paris (The Seine and Notre-Dame Cathedral, Paris). The May Triptych is a set of three impressionist works donated to the Musée d’Orsay, framed together. In it the works of Alfred Sisley’s Saint-Denis Island, Camille Pissarro’s Entrance to the village of Voisins and Claude Monet’s Pleasure Boats. It presents an interesting way of comparing the three impressionist artists’ styles. Edouard Manet’s La Serveuse de bocks (The bar maid) draws attention as it is a marked contrast to the subject matter of the other paintings.

 

Edouard Manet: La serveuse de bocks

 

The third room, and quite possibly my favourite of Colours of Impressionism: Masterpieces from the Musée D’Orsay, is dedicated to white and the way in which it was seen by the impressionists. Claude Monet’s La Pie (The Magpie) dominates the room. A painting which resembles paintings accepted by the Salon (the Paris Art authority at the time) only in its impressive dimensions (89 x 130cm). It was widely criticised at the time of its release due to its lack of subject matter (a small magpie on such a large otherwise bare snowscape), and Monet’s use of blues, pinks and yellows to show the way the snow is illuminated by the light. It is easy to see why this painting so inspired Paul Perrin as a child and into adulthood, who along with Marine Kisiel, curated this exhibition. Another of my favourites of the snowscapes is Alfred Sisley’s La Neige à Louveciennes (Snow at Louveciennes). We see a small figure in the depth of the painting, dressed in browns, greys and black which stands out starkly against the snow-covered path, walls and trees that surround it. Again, Sisley, like Monet in La Pie, uses blues, particularly visible in the trees on the left of the canvas to more accurately depict the light reflecting off the snow. In contrast, Charles,-Francois Daubigny’s simply named La Neige (Snow) shows a bleak snowscape against a grey, orange toned sky.

 

Claude Monet: La Pie

 

The next room of the exhibition moves into greens and blues. In it is Auguste Renoir’s portrait of Claude Monet against the backdrop of green and pink curtain and foliage. It is displayed next to Claude Monet’s Un coin d’appartement (A corner of the apartment). Looking closely at Renoir’s painting alongside, you notice that the same curtains and foliage are present. Renoir has painted Monet as Monet is painting his child in the dark shadows of his apartment. Just as the figure in La Neige à Louveciennes is in the background calling the viewer in, the child in the dark shadows in this painting takes on an almost ghost-like, slightly eerie feel.

 

Auguste Renoir: Claude Monet

 

The fifth room of Colours of Impressionism: Masterpieces from the Musée D’Orsay shows a move from the beginnings of impressionist works to the movement of neo-impressionism – the way in which new impressionists saw colour and light. The paintings in this room look like mosaics from a distance. Rather than long brushstrokes, the neo-impressionists applied small dots and placed colours side by side corresponding with the science of colour. Théo van Rysselberghe’s L’entrée du port de Roscoff (Entrance to the port of Roscoff) features mainly blue and white dots to make up the waters of the port and the building clouds I the background. Small boats in the port are also painted in dots of blue. One the most enticing and playful paintings in this room is Henri-Edmond Cross’ La fuite de nymphes (Flight of the nymphs) is comprised of larger, more square shaped dots with a playful scene of nymphs dancing against the green and blue backdrop. Paul Signac’s Le chateau des papes (Palace of the popes) shows the pink and oranges of the palace against and in the reflections of the green and blue water and sky.

 

Henri-Edmond Cross: La fuite de nymphes (Flight of the nymphs)

 

The final room of the exhibition shows, in sort, the original impressionists’ reaction to and development in the neo-impressionist and post-neo-impressionist world.  Auguste Renoir’s Gabrielle à la rose shows the change in Renoir’s style with a reduced colour palette and a reduction in his mixing of colours. It shows a half-dressed, open bloused woman holding a flower on a table in front of her and one behind her ear. The painting is heavy in reds and pinks and not many other colours are used. Monet’s La cathédrale de Rouen, Le Portail et la tour de Saint-Romain, plein soleil (Roeun Cathedral : the portal and Saint-Romain tower, full sunlight), one of the final works you see before leaving the exhibition shows the cathedral overflowing the canvas and painted in mainly pinky cream tones against a tiny bit of blue sky. It was part of a series of 20 cathedrals exhibited in 1891 and 1892 and dedicated to his wife, Alice. The lines of the cathedral’s structure are defined yet at the same time blurred.

 

Claude Monet: La cathédrale de Rouen, Le Portail et la tour de Saint-Romain, plein soleil (Roeun Cathedral : the portal and Saint-Romain tower, full sunlight)

 

Colours of Impressionism: Masterpieces from the Musée D’Orsay has many of the impressionist pieces we all recognise and love as well as some lesser-known but equally magnificent works. Perhaps one of the most recognised and photographed works in the exhibition is Claude Monet’s Le basin aux nymphéas, harmonie rose (Water lily pond, pink harmony).

Claude Monet: Le basin aux nymphéas, harmonie rose (Water lily pond, pink harmony)

 

The exhibition is being staged in the Elder Wing of the Art Gallery of South Australia, on the entrance level of the gallery as opposed to its basement space usually reserved for exhibitions. The Elder Wing is one of Australia’s few 19th century gallery spaces and is in some ways reminiscent of the light filled interior of the Musée D’Orsay where the paintings are usually housed. The Art Gallery of South Australia even used this as part of the drawcard in putting forward its proposal for an impressionist exhibition to the Musée D’Orsay.

 

The exhibition marks a new way of looking at impressionist paintings and does so in an ambitious and, in my view, successful way. Even if you have been lucky enough to see these paintings in their home in Paris before, this exhibition guarantees a new perspective.

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Tickets: Children $10, students $12, members and concessions $20, adults $25.

 

You only have a few days left to see the works with the Colours of Impressionism: Masterpieces from the Musée d’Orsay exhibition closing on Sunday 29 July at 5pm. Get in quickly!