This past weekend we went to Plaffeien for the Alpabzug. It’s a festival celebrating bringing the cows down from the mountains for winter. Plaffeien is a small town not far from Geneva. I was surprised how many people showed up for the festival!

The cows are given floral hats and decorations to wear (and of course they have their deafening bells!) The hats seem to be made of small pine trees or branches with a floral arrangement.

After the festival, we stayed at an airbnb about a mile out of town so we had to do a bit of hiking to get there. We’d hoped there would be some nice hiking trails near the airbnb but the trails we hiked were not our favorites. Maybe it just wasn’t our weekend for hiking.

All told, the festival was interesting and Jenn is planning for us to see it in another town next year!