Saturday, August 06, 2005
"Seefest" Zell am See

If you ever end up in Zell am See (Austria) during July or August, make sure you attend the "Seefest" (Lake Festival). We just got back from one of the two they have each year, and it was great, even though the weather is crappy (currently, the weather here is like it normally is in October...).

The festival usually starts during the day (as early as 10am or 11am) and then goes on throughout the day with all kinds of bands and concerts and food and various other types of entertainment. This is very nice on a warm mid-summer night. This time however, we went there late, because it simply was too cold to stay there for hours and hours. There weren't all that many people (5000 perhaps... 10,000 tops), but it was still fun.

The best part was the annual fireworks display (we timed our visit accordingly). Maybe my opinion is biased, because I know the person in charge of the fireworks (he mixes them together himself...). He is also the person who arranged for the fireworks at my birthday party last year. Anyway: I think this is the best fireworks display I ever saw. It was called the "Sound of Fire" and that's pretty much what it was. A choreographed affair with music around the entire lake (they actually put up wireless speakers all around the lake, which is quite large). The conventional parts of the fireworks were impressive enough, but then on top of that, he did several things I have never seen before. During one part, he shot up fireworks with tiny parachute, so the fireworks just kind of hovered in the air for minutes at a time, suspended on an invisible line between 2 parachutes. Very cool (and almost spooky). Then, they had some fireworks that they fired very flat so they immediately fell into the water where they floated for a while and "danced" in the water which was lit up in all kinds of colors. During another phase, they launched the fireworks from below the surface of the water. Awesome! They also used other pyrotechnics and fog. At one point I would not have been surprised if a Viking dragon ship would have emerged from the clouds.

You can imagine this like a mixture between an impressively choreographed conventional fireworks and the "dancing fountains" at the Bellagio hotel in Las Vegas, except done in fire instead of water (and with a lot more variety). On top of that, they mixed in some very imaginative new ideas and at times almost overwhelmed the audience with sheer power, while at other times building up lots of suspense by varying the pace and intensity.

This was extremely impressive. I have seen a number of very large and expensive fireworks before. So far, the "Power of Houston" was my favorite (and at the time, the most expensive firework ever done, I believe), but this beat even that. It wasn't as long as the one in Houston, but the setting on the lake and the way it was choreographed was simply amazing!