They had been celebrating both Switzerland and the existence of what unites them all: the Scouting Movement. The Scouts in Kandersteg, all gathered in KISC, the Kandersteg International Scout Centre, gathered from around 30 nations at least that night, warmed up at nightfall with dances, torch lighting and chanting before they all (!) marched down two miles to the village center of Kandersteg to join with several hundred inhabitants and guests awaiting them already on a lawn in front of the train station. It was a gigantic show.

And quite spontaneously many of the freshly arrived young folks started an improvised dance to the sound of traditional Swiss folk music the Kandersteg Brass Band provided as a background. A big surprise to many of the folks present.
It was the hour of politics and of!cial representation: The President of the municipal council, René Maeder had already greeted the inhabitants and the Scouts alike when Philipp Matthias Bregy, the newly elected Swiss president of the Swiss «Die Mitte» («The Center»), held his multi-lingual keynote speech.

He included the Scouts as well as the partly French speaking audience of the coldish night gathered in front of the Kandersteg railway station. Thus, sentences like «N‘y a-t-il pas de nombreuses raisons d‘être reconnaissants de pouvoir vivre dans ce pays?» or (in English) «Aren‘t there many reasons to be grateful that we are allowed to live in this country?» underlined the main topics of his speech.

He was stressing the positive effect of thankfulness, in the face of what he called a «dividend of peace» we all had been living on for decades by now, a line of thought still being prevalent the next day when the dif!cult news about the US tariffs was made known.

And addressing the appx. 1800 Scouts present that particular night, he spontaneously asked: «Are you happy you can be here in the mountains of Kandersteg?» The unanimous answer was screamed into the approaching nightfall: An extremely loud «Yeeessss!» from almost 2000 voices gathered. Goosebumps.

William Tell performed humorously
The following day the Scouts celebrated a day of joy and action on the KISC grounds, with programme that ranged from breakfast and Radio shows to individual challenges and Global Goals presentations. The meaning of the day was highlighted by a thoughtfully staged humorous version of «William Tell», trying to contribute the Swiss National Day in an educative yet very entertaining way. The reason being that many international Scouts had never heard of the story before. The Scout’s version in particular, because of its sharply honed English dialogues and expressive comic scenes, reminded strongly of «Monty Python», a British comedy troupe formed in 1969 and had been a trend-setter in the development of comedy on a global level.
The day concluded – at least for the Scouts – with a traditional international camp!re.

MARTIN NATTERER

PICTURES: MARTIN NATTERER