The Cortège

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The Cortège (Swedish: Cortègen), or The Chalmers Cortège (Swedish: Chalmerscortègen) is an annual carnival parade held on Walpurgis Night (April 30) by students of the Chalmers University of Technology in Gothenburg. The Cortège consists of 500 students and around 50 truck carriages, each carriage depicting—in a satirical and comic way—significant events that has taken place since the previous parade. The procession makes its way through the city centre, where it is seen by around 250,000 people each year.

[edit] History

Before the first Cortège was arranged, students at Chalmers walked around on the streets with one foot on the pavement and one foot in the gutter each year on April 30, the day when Chalmerists exchange their black student caps for white caps. In 1909, the students decided to gather all the horse carriages in the city to travel the distance they usually walked. The next year, the student union of the university decided to organize a parade including student culture jokes, and in 1911 a committee, Chalmers Cortège Committé (CCC), was created to organize the whole procession. Ever since, with the sole exception of 1940, due to World War II, CCC has arranged The Cortège.