fourth of july

Fourth of July, the most American of holidays -- it's so important that we get a long weekend off for it, which I spent...

...going to Switzerland. It just so happened that there was a huge party in Zurich that weekend, so there were carnival rides and fireworks, and the celebration was probably bigger than whatever I would have ended up participating in had I stayed in the States to celebrate.

You know it's a party when they have flags everywhere:

And not only carnival rides...

...and pony rides (who needs a normal carousel when you can make one out of real ponies??)...

...and man-powered tram rides...

...but also camel rides:

And you can't really call it a good party unless there's a scary corn stand:

And just for good measure, to make sure that people don't go too wild, the ticket inspectors were out in full force (there are nine in this picture at one tram stop alone, and there were three more that I couldn't get in the shot):

This is Zurich's way of saying: "Have fun, just make sure you have a valid tram ticket while doing so."