A Brief History

Everything started with a demoscene meeting called Buenzli #1 at the scouts home in a small town in Switzerland. In the years to come, the event grew into a veritable demo party, also appealing a whole lot of other computer enthusiast from all over Europe. With the 20th edition of Buenzli, the event got the subtitle «demodays», has a new location and thrilling features.

It was the year 1996, when a few demosceners from Switzerland gathered at the scouts home in Jegenstorf, a small town close to Berne: Buenzli was born. Later in 1996, they met again for the second try, and all of a sudden, Buenzli turned into an event series. Moving away from the countryside with no neighbors but cows, Buenzli found a new home in the basements of hotels in Berne. However, the cow was kept as a mascot. After a short visit to a completely different location in Beromünster, the event returned to Berne, to the famous Bierhübeli - nowadays this is a large concert hall, commercially driven and successfull. An event like Buenzli didn't have enough money to stay there. The event was moved to Easter Switzerland in 2003: Welcome to Winterthur. Now, when Buenzli takes place for the 20th time, another town has been chosen: Olten, in the heart of Switzerland.

In the beginning, mostly Swiss demosceners visited Buenzli and were aware of the event. That changed, with Buenzli 10, when the first international visitors appeared. The organizers have followed this path and today, the audience at the demodays is coming from all over Europe. Around 2002, the organization of Buenzli has been taken over by the team that is still pushing the event today. To make things go more professional and flawless, an association, devoted to the organization of Buenzli, has been founded. It's called «Echtzeit - Digitale Kultur».

The logo and appereance of Buenzli and demodays have changed over the years. See this gallery for a selection of our logos.