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The Cortège (Swedish: Cortègen), or The Chalmers Cortège (Swedish: Chalmerscortègen) is an annual carnival parade held on Walpurgis Night (30 April) by students of the Chalmers University of Technology in Gothenburg. The Cortège consists of around 600 students and around 50 truck carriages, each carriage depicting—in a satirical and comic way—significant events that have 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.
History
Before the first Cortège was arranged, students at Chalmers walked the streets with one foot on the pavement and one foot in the gutter each year on 30 April, the day when Chalmers students traditionally 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 Chalmers Students' Union decided to organize a parade of student culture jokes. In the year 1911 a committee, Chalmers Cortège Committé (CCC), was created to organize the whole procession. Ever since, except for 1912 due to exam scheduling conflicts, as well as 1940 due to World War II, CCC has arranged The Cortège.