{"id":2618,"date":"2011-09-13T13:26:10","date_gmt":"2011-09-13T13:26:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.runquiltknitwrite.com\/?p=2618"},"modified":"2011-09-13T13:26:10","modified_gmt":"2011-09-13T13:26:10","slug":"zurich-knabenschiessen-aka-boys-shooting-day","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.runquiltknitwrite.net\/?p=2618","title":{"rendered":"Zurich Knabenschiessen aka boys&#8217; shooting day"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/www.runquiltknitwrite.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/09\/ks_logo.jpg\" ><img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-2619\" style=\"margin: 20px;\" title=\"ks_logo\" src=\"http:\/\/www.runquiltknitwrite.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/09\/ks_logo.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"130\" height=\"166\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Yesterday was a public holiday in the city of Z\u00fcrich and one of the most unusual festivals in Switzerland took place over the long weekend. <em>Knabenschiessen<\/em> translates roughly as boys&#8217; shooting day and it is what it says it is &#8211; a shooting contest. All children are given the day off \u00a0school, and teenagers aged between 13-17 take part in a traditional target shooting competition using Swiss army rifles.<\/p>\n<p>Anyone can turn up and shoot, as long as they are the right age and either live or go to school in Canton Z\u00fcrich &#8211; no experience required. Since 1991 girls are allowed to shoot too &#8211; and actually this year the winner, and the only person to shoot a perfect score, was a 15 year old schoolgirl. It was only the 3rd time a girl has won.<\/p>\n<p>The competition is always held on the second weekend in September and has officially been held since 1889, but actually dates back to the 17th Century, making it one of the oldest festivals in Switzerland. This year over 4,000 kids turned up to shoot and many thousands more to enjoy the huge funfair that surrounds the competition.<a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/www.runquiltknitwrite.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/09\/220px-Knabenschiessen011.jpg\" ><img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-2621\" style=\"margin: 20px;\" title=\"220px-Knabenschiessen01\" src=\"http:\/\/www.runquiltknitwrite.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/09\/220px-Knabenschiessen011.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"220\" height=\"171\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>My son &#8211; who is 12 &#8211; is desperate to be old enough to take part and we&#8217;ve already had a discussion along the lines of: \u00a0&#8216;<em>Mum, when I win the giant flat screen television next year, can I have it in my bedroom?<\/em>&#8216;. No ifs or buts, my boy fully expects to win. Life could get exciting round here!<\/p>\n<p>I can&#8217;t imagine something like this happening anywhere else -but maybe I&#8217;m wrong. Here, with a few exceptions, all men do military service and they all take their rifles, pistols and ammunition home with them and keep them once their service is over&#8230;.just incase they need to defend the country in a hurry&#8230; It took me a while to get my head round the whole idea. This is not something that would ever happen in England!<\/p>\n<p>Helen<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp; Yesterday was a public holiday in the city of Z\u00fcrich and one of the most unusual festivals in Switzerland took place over the long weekend. Knabenschiessen translates roughly as boys&#8217; shooting day and it is what it says it is &#8211; a shooting contest. All children are given the day off \u00a0school, and teenagers [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pQtrc-Ge","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.runquiltknitwrite.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2618"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.runquiltknitwrite.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.runquiltknitwrite.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.runquiltknitwrite.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.runquiltknitwrite.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2618"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.runquiltknitwrite.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2618\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2624,"href":"https:\/\/www.runquiltknitwrite.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2618\/revisions\/2624"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.runquiltknitwrite.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2618"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.runquiltknitwrite.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2618"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.runquiltknitwrite.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2618"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}