It's the Zibelemärit!

In Praise of Eccentric Festivals

Winter has finally arrived in our fairytale city, blanketing it in pure snow and bathing it in chill light.

My friend Hà took this lovely photo.

It’s the perfect time of year for a festival celebrating . . . onions? Yes, onions! Why not?

The Zibelemärit (onion market) is my second-favorite eccentric Swiss festival. (My favorite eccentric Swiss festival is the Alpabzug, when the cows parade back down to the valleys after their summers high up in the Alps. You can read about the Alpabzug—and see the pretty cows all decked out in their floral finery—here.) The Zibelemärit takes place in Bern on the fourth Monday of November every year. Schools and shops close, and people from around the country pour into the Old City by the tens of thousands to eat, drink, be merry, and honor all things onion.

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Mythic Origins of a Modern Party

The modern incarnation of the Zibelemärit dates back to the 1850s, but Berners will tell you that the festival has been going on in one form or another since the beginning of the fifteenth century. In 1405, a devastating fire swept through Bern and destroyed the city. A neighboring city, Fribourg, sent its citizens to Bern to help with cleanup and rebuilding.¹ This generosity was especially appreciated because Fribourg and Bern had historically been enemies. As a way of thanking Fribourg, Bern’s city fathers granted the Fribourgers (Fribourgeois?) permission to sell their onions in Bern every year, and a festival was born. The onion market helped two rivals reconcile—and also advanced commerce and prosperity for both cities.

These days, festival-goers start arriving at 4am, when the vendors are still setting up their stands. Beer and Glühwein (hot mulled wine) are on tap, and the drinking commences! One year my husband and I headed to the festival at 6am for an onion breakfast, and the streets were already packed. No matter what time you get there (no need to go so early; I recommend arriving around 10am), from the moment you step off the tram, you are greeted by the aroma of onions, the shouts of revelers, and the occasional tolling of church bells. As you move through the throng, you will breathe in pungent garlic and sweet spice, be sprinkled with confetti, and be tempted by the many delectable products on offer. Perhaps you will succumb and snack on Zwiebelkuchen or Käsekuchen (onion and cheese tarts) or indulge in a breakfast beer.

Pragmatic Purpose

Festivals aren’t just fun, but they offer practical benefits too. In days of yore, before importing produce from warmer countries was a thing, people in colder climes needed to stock up on potatoes, carrots, turnips, onions, and the like before winter set in. So the Zibelemärit would give Berners a convenient way to fill their cellars. Of course, nowadays we can just buy whatever we need whenever, but it is still fun to shop at the market for, say, decorative onion braids.

So fancy!

Local festivals allow regions to salute—and sell—their distinctive products. The Zibelemärit offers much more than onions, beer, and Glühwein. There is also sausage!

Is that a giant pile of sausage on the table, or are you just happy to see me?

Below are two other special local products. On the left is a stand where I spent an inordinate amount of money on my favorite Swiss cheese, Alpkäse. On the right is a rainbow of Aare bags.² We stuff these bags full of our clothes, towel, wallet, and phone, roll them up tight, and wade into the icy-cold, crystal-clear water of the Aare River to be swept away by the swift current. We emerge miles later, and the bags have kept everything dry.

The Zibelemärit not only stimulates the economy, but it gives us a reason to get out of the house during a time we might otherwise consider the doldrums, before ski season and the holidays get underway. So consider this essay my PSA for coming to Bern (or any other popular destination) in the off-season—even in November. You might chance upon a wild party with the locals!

My Theory of the Zibelemärit

Everyone needs to cut loose now and then. This is especially true in rule-following, hierarchical cultures. And so these cultures develop festivals that overturn hierarchies and let people blow off steam—which makes it easier for them to abide by strict laws during the rest of the year. Ancient Romans had Saturnalia, Jews have Purim, Christians have Mardi Gras, and schoolchildren have Opposite Day.³

The Zibelemärit is Bern’s Saturnalia. The Swiss are known for expecting their neighbors to be quiet (even going so far as to forbid doing laundry and yard work on Sundays and in the early afternoon, which is nap time). But at the Zibelemärit, children buy noisemakers whose high-pitched chirps make quite a ruckus—and it is a treat to watch them enjoy the noise as they bop passers-by. As for the adults, well, the otherwise tidy Swiss spend the day throwing confetti with wild abandon.

This friendly policeman tosses confetti at me. Right before I took this photo, he had been engaged in a confetti battle with a group of middle-schoolers.

The confetti truly gets everywhere:

Most years I go into the Old City on the day after the Zibelemärit, and, amazingly, all the confetti is always swept up and everything has been restored to normal. This is very Swiss!⁴ But for a few days we will find stray confetti strewn on tram floors and spilling from our shoes, pockets, and hoods, to remind us of the chaotic fun of the Zibelemärit and to carry us into the more conventional winter holidays with smiles on our faces.

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How about you, readers? Is there an eccentric local festival where you live? Or have you ever visited such a festival while traveling? Please tell us about it in the comments!

The Tidbit

The most popular food at the Zibelemärit is Zwiebelkuchen, which a crack team of bakers cooks up lickety-split in a temporary kitchen put up for the market every year.

You may not have such an impressive onion-tart-making setup in your kitchen, but you can still make delicious tarts at home.

It’s time for a confession. I am not crazy about onion tarts. So here is a recipe that gives onion skeptics like me some other options:

Mini Tarts for All Tastes

The recipe below was inspired by one from Helvetic Kitchen, by Andie Pilot. It makes a dozen mini tarts—four each of onion, cheese, and mushroom. Everyone gets just what they like! These tarts are perfect for holiday parties. You can serve the tarts either fresh from the oven or at room temperature.

Ingredients

For the dough:

1-1/2c flour

12T (150gms) cold unsalted butter, cut into cubes

1/2tsp salt

about 1/3c (60ml) vodka from the freezer (or ice water)

For the custard:

2 large eggs, at room temperature

1/2c (125ml) each whole milk and heavy cream, at room temperature

1/4tsp nutmeg, plus a grind or two of black pepper

For the fillings:

about 1c (200gms) grated sharp cheese, such as Gruyère or cheddar

about 2T olive oil

1 medium onion, peeled, halved, and thinly sliced into half-moons

a bit of salt

a dozen or so mushrooms, coarsely chopped

1 small clove garlic, finely minced with a dash of salt to make a paste

leaves from a few stems of Italian flat-leaf parsley and from a sprig of thyme, coarsely chopped together

Method

1. Preheat the oven to 400F/200C and generously butter a 12-cup muffin tin.

2. Make the dough: Process the flour, salt, and butter in a food processor and slowly pour in the vodka until the dough comes together. On a floured surface, roll the dough out to about 1/4” thick, and cut 12 discs using a 4” (10cm) round cutter. Fit each disc into a muffin cup, poke a few holes in each, and refrigerate until you are ready to assemble the tarts.

3. Make the custard: Whisk the custard ingredients together in a large measuring cup.

4. Set up your fillings: Have the grated cheese ready in one bowl. Then, sauté the onion in the olive oil, sprinkling a bit of salt over it to help it along, until the onion has wilted and shrunk down (about ten minutes). Remove the onion to a second bowl. In the same pan (you may need to add a bit more olive oil) sauté the mushrooms with a bit of salt until they have given up their liquid and shrunk down. Add in the garlic and herbs and sauté briefly. Remove to a third bowl.

5. Assemble the tarts: Fill four tarts with cheese, four with onion, and four with mushroom. Then carefully pour the custard into each muffin cup to about 3/4 full. Note: You may find you have a bit of everything left over. That’s great! You can throw it all together into an omelet for lunch.

6. Bake the tarts for 20–25 minutes, until they are golden brown on top.

7. Run a knife around each tart and use a fork to lift them out. Cool on a rack.

1. The entire Old City was rebuilt at once, using a local, green-gray stone. Because of its unique, unified architecture, Bern’s Old City is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. My family likes to joke that at this point you would be hard-pressed to find something over here that isn’t a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and our son is convinced that “UNESCO World Heritage Site” just means that there aren’t enough bathrooms.

2. A quick lesson in Bern Deutsch: Äuä (pronounced “ow-ay”), which you can see printed on some of the bags, means “Really?!” You can learn about this and other Bern Deutsch expressions in this fun article.

3. There is no culture on earth that is as hierarchical and rule-bound as an American middle school.

4. The Swiss are wonderfully incapable of littering. Our daughter once went on a school service project to pick up litter in Bern’s parks and along the riverfront. The project had to be called off because there was no litter to be picked up, anywhere.