Computer issues

Just wanted to let everyone know that my computer has died, so there will be a hiatus from blogging until the situation is remedied.

Meltingen to Grellingen

Today was a beautiful day for a hike! My friend and I decided to hike from Meltingen to Grellingen, the reverse of a previous planned hike that got detoured somehow. We both decided that it was much easier to follow the trail this direction. We hopped on the S3 train from Basel SBB to Laufen, then the 111 bus to the Meltingerbrücke stop. I think the whole trip took about 45 minutes to an hour. Then we just followed the wanderweg yellow diamonds and signs to Grellingen.

It was sunny and got up to about 18°C (65°F). The trail was a bit wet and muddy in some places but all in all was no problem to hike along. The bärlauch is still growing strong, and we could smell it as we passed by. There were a lot more flowers out, and many more of the trees are springing forth with little green leaves. We even saw a couple of butterflies. I was able to get a pretty good photograph of one of them. It landed in a patch of violets, which made a nice backdrop for the colors on its wings. This is definitely a hike to repeat.

Thar be dragons! Lucern and Mt. Pilatus

There are apparently a few legends about dragons on the slopes of Mt. Pilatus, which overlooks Lake Lucern. It was a beautiful day for an outing, and we enjoyed a relaxing day exploring the city of Lucern and strolling along the lake. We stopped at Restaurant Storchen for a tasty lunch - crostini with various toppings, roast beef platter, and warm asparagus salad. Next time we visit we'll have to head up to the mountain top on what is billed as the steepest cog railway. Lucern is a very clean city, and the walkway extends quite far around the lake, and is well maintained with pretty flowers and landscaping. It is possible you can walk all the way around the lake, but we didn't try that as it would likely have taken quite a few hours. It seemed like it would be a great place to live, and the view can't be beat. There were a lot of shops and restaurants, and we enjoyed walking along the old city wall where we enjoyed a spectacular view of the city, lake and mountains from the top of one of the towers.

Water tower with covered bridge and Hotel Gutsch




Old city wall and clock tower


Mountain Views




Mural and Spring flowers


Surprise! Highland cattle (they had an enclosure next to the old city wall)

Schauenberg Ruins

Saturday, March 29, 2008

We decided to try to hunt down another castle ruin today, and picked one outside of Pratteln called Schauenberg. We managed to find it, but it was closed! Apparently some of the ruins are actually falling down enough that the public can't be trusted around them. There was a little sign that said "Achtung, Steinschlag" and something else that we figured probably meant that it was closed (must remember to bring along our German dictionary!). We followed the trail around to the other side, and found an old wrought iron gate firmly locked.



I took a photo through the gate, but you couldn't see much. We were wondering about the little house that seemed to be built amongst the ruins. On the map it looked like there was another possible ruin, so we decided to head up that way. and up...and up...we ended up at the top of a big cliff, with a great birds-eye view of the ruin we had just visited. We decided that the 'little house' amongst the castle ruins was possibly a watch post or something like that, but haven't been able to find any further information about it. From there we continued back down and around to Munchenstein and hopped on a tram home.

Biel outing in the snow!

Monday, March 24, 2008

We took a trip with one of MrB's coworkers and his friend to Biel/Bienne. It was quite cold and snowy, so we didn't get to see much of the view across the lake, or much of the town, though we walked quite a ways up the hill. The town is dominated by a big Rolex factory/office building, and has a nice old part of town to wander around in. We went into an old church that had nice stained glass windows, and most importantly was warm! We warmed up in there for a few minutes before continuing on up the hill and back down and around to the lake where we watched a snow squall blow over the lake and turned into icicles. Then we headed back into the old town for a quick coffee and pastry to warm up before we hopped on the train back to Basel.

Snowy church door and stained glass



Rolex and old church clock tower

Snow squall and pretty purple flowers

Ruine Dorneck

Saturday, March 22, 2008

We had seen this ruin overlooking the town of Dornach when we were taking the train back from an earlier hike. We decided today was a good day to head out and see if we could find our way to it, even though the weather predicted was not very promising. We took tram number 10 out to Dornach, and without much help from the Swiss trail markers, managed to wind our way up the hill through the town to the ruins.

On the way up through the town we saw the strange monumental Goetheanum building. It was hailing and raining as we were walking up past it, so I didn't stop to pull out the camera and take any photographs.

Unfortunately, while you could walk around the outer area of the ruins, the inner area was closed. The sign said something about being open mid-March, but it was already past that, and it was still closed, so we'll have to go back and see what we missed at some point. Maybe it will be nice enough to take some photos of the Goetheanum building too.

Snowy ruins




Underpass

Hike from Grellingen to Waldeck

A friend and I decided to hike from Grellingen to Meltingen, following a stream through the valley between the hills. We were greeted with wind and misty rain as we stepped off the train in Grellingen, but set off with our hoods up. Within about 10 minutes the rain had blown away and the sun was peeking through the clouds. It remained cloudy with occasional glimpses of sun for most of the hike, and thankfully the rain did not return. The temperature was a little chilly, but very comfortable for a hike.

The trail wound back and forth across the stream with many sturdy moss covered bridges along the way. The ground was covered with bärlauch (bear's leek- seen carpeting the ground along the right side of the trail in the first photo). This is a garlic flavored green that can be used in salads (like chives) or cooking (I had bärlauch ravioli once), and the air smelled faintly of garlic where it grew thickest, and when the sun shone on it. There were also numerous little white and yellow spring flowers dotting the ground, though the trees are just barely budding. Moss coated everything, and ferns and vines of ivy draped many of the old stonework and trees, a testament to the eternal dampness of the valley.







We wandered along the trail snapping many photographs - it was such a pretty day for it! We even got to explore a little cave we saw along the way. It didn't go back very far, but we thought it might have been a good cave to stay in if you didn't have a house, though it was a bit damp. There was a raised area in back that would have worked for a sleeping platform, and an area off to the side in the front that would have been perfect for a fire. Across the stream there was another cave for your friends, which you can see in the photo, though we didn't explore that one. The stream was a bit too high at that point to try getting across, and there was no convenient bridge.


Somewhere along the way we lost the trail to Meltingen, and with some help from my friend's GPS, we eventually ended up in Waldeck, where we caught a Post bus back to Grellingen with only a few minutes wait for the train back to Basel. We'd like to try this hike again, and figure out where we made the wrong turn off the trail to Meltingen!

Freiburg im Breisgau, Germany

A friend of mine got a group of five people together to take advantage of a special discount travel ticket, five for the price of three or something like that. She wanted to go to Freiburg for some shopping.

When we got there we split into two groups, two of us who had definite shopping in mind, and the other three, who were content to wander. The three of us had a nice relaxing day, enjoying the spring flowers and pleasant weather and the sights of Freiburg. It is still a little chilly out, but mild enough that the cherry trees are blooming and crocuses and daffodils are popping out.

There is a good variety of stores, all located conveniently around the town center. I'm sure there are some farther out as well, but we didn't venture much beyond the main shopping area as we were on foot. I finally managed to find a new pair of good walking shoes, which I have been looking for since before we moved here in August. The ones I have are quite worn out.

This is the bottom part of the clocktower/city gate seen in the previous photograph, there was a McDonald's just to the right, in part of the old building. To the right of that, there was this old art deco building seen in the next photograph, with a Burger King in the bottom floor. Needless to say, we didn't have any interest in eating at either one. Instead we had a very tasty lunch of vegetable salad and pasta with black truffle at an Italian trattoria we saw on the way into town from the bus station. It was the first time I have ever had black truffle, and it was quite tasty.


In our wanders, we passed by these two cathedrals. Many of these older churches that we have seen are at least partly enveloped in scaffolding, which unfortunately detracts somewhat from their appearance.

Strasbourg, France

Strasbourg is a pretty little city, wreathed with canals, and was very cold the weekend we were there. The center of town is dominated by the towering gothic Cathèdrale Notre Dame de Strasbourg, built over a period of 400 years or so and never completed. The stone carvings on the outside and the stained glass are well worth a visit. You can see the tower in the background of this photo.

We arrived early Saturday, meeting our friends at the train station, and made our way to the hotel to check in. Then we headed out to wander around the city center and find a place to eat lunch. We decided on crepes, and the little restaurant we found specialized in them. They were absolutely delicious! No surprise there, we have found the food in France to be the tastiest in Europe so far. Unfortunately I didn't make note of the name of the restaurant, but it is not too far from the cathedral.

After lunch, we headed to the Salon des Vins des Vignerons Indépendants for which we had free tickets. It was huge! I think there were over 600 different tasting stations, and people were routinely walking out towing dollies with crates of wine. We ended up with only two bottles of red wine, a bottle of cognac, but everyone had fun tasting and comparing. I think we made it through less than a quarter of the stands. You could definitely see why wine is one of the biggest businesses in France.

Sunday we went to the Musées de la Ville de Strasbourg in the Palais Rohan. There are a number of museums in this former Archbishop's Palace, and we spent the morning roaming through them, staying in out of the cold. We happened upon an exhibit of Albrecht Dürer's prints that was a temporary exhibit, quite a special treat, then wandered through a number of the other museums. The Musée des Arts Décoratifs was interesting, as many of the rooms had been furnished according to records for when the archbishop was in residence, and using period furniture whenever possible. Photographs were not allowed, unfortunately.

We will most likely be making another trip to Strasbourg in the future, as we did not make it out to the intriguing Musée Les Secrets du Chocolate, or the castle of Fleckenstein.

Here are some photos from around the town, and of the cathedral.

Looking up the street at the front of the cathedral. This is a truly massive building, photos just don't do it justice.







Detail of the front, you can see little beasties cavorting amongst the saintly figures.



View of the back, where you can see the flying buttresses.








Gargoyles along the side of the cathedral.



Sun through the stained glass windows inside the cathedral.




View up one of the canals in Petite France, a neighborhood in Strasbourg.

Fasnacht!

Chienbäse, or the burning parade at Liestal Fasnacht.

This fiery event could and would never be able to be held in the U.S. Or at least I have never heard of such a thing happening. They parade huge burning objects through the town for a couple of hours. No ropes or barriers, just firemen standing around to douse the helmets and hats of the people carrying the big torches, and the crowd when they got too hot!

A group of around 10 or so of MrB's colleagues got together to go to this. It was nice to go with people who knew where they were going, though if you just followed the crowd, there was no doubt where the event was happening. The people were packed so thick that you could barely move along the sides of the road. We stayed back about 3 rows, and it was probably better there than at the front, because those fires were HOT, but it did make it hard to see a lot of what went on, and take good photos.

The most impressive were these huge wagons stacked full of wood, with huge tongues of flame and sparks shooting into the sky. There were also people carrying huge torches, which I didn't get any good photos of, but the links at the bottom of this have some nice shots. They came through in groups of about 3-10 torch bearers, then one of the big wagon torches would roll by. The torch bearers marched along for a ways, then had to stop and set the torches down for a rest and a dousing, then pick them back up and go running along to a great cheer from the crowd, then settle back in to a walk.

One group of torch bearers even had little 'spits' set up on top of their hats with real sausages to roast on them! And they were roasting away! Quite a few had metal colinders as their protective hats, some had felt pointy hats, though most had hard hats or firemen hats. One group was dressed up like mariachis and had decorated sombreros, but they were pulling a wagon, so didn't need the fire protection as badly as the torch bearers.

The street was lined with burning embers after the event, and covered with confetti from an earlier parade. The firemen did their job well, because the confetti didn't go up in a wall of flame along the street. The crowd getting back to the train was insanely packed, you could only shuffle along the entire route back to the train station, somewhere between a quarter and a half a mile I think. And getting on to the train there were no orderly lines, everyone just kind of shoved like mad and popped through the bottleneck at the doors, very crazy.

Basel Morgenstreich

We planned on going to the Basel Morgenstreich as well, which was at 4am, and we figured by the time we got home it would not make sense to go to bed. So we stayed up all night, and headed out to see the Basel festivities at about 3:15, settled in to a spot and proceeded to freeze (it was about 25°F/-4°C) for couple of hours while we watched them parade their colorful satirical lanterns by, accompanied by screeching piccolos and crashing drums. Each group also had miniature lanterns attached to their hats.

Thankfully, where we were, near Schifflände, was not quite as crowded as the street in Liestal, but I think if we'd braved the Marktplatz or Barfusserplatz it would have been. There were bus-loads of tourists being shipped in all day for the event. I didn't bring my camera to the 4am parade because the only light was from the lanterns, and the camera has too long a delay to take good photos at night. Or I haven't figured out how to take good photos at night, I'm not sure which.

I plan to take photos later at the Munsterplatz when they display the lanterns, and possibly as we wander around downtown these next couple of days, so will hopefully have a few more to post. The costumes are very colorful and bizarre, with huge caricature faces and bright poofy hair and clothes, characters of all kinds, animals and fantastical creatures as well.

Two links to other pages with description and images of the burning parade.
English Forum, with the description and pix at the last post.
Photographer's website, great pix

Swamped

Just wanted to let everyone know that we haven't fallen off the face of the earth. We've both been busy with work, and just haven't done anything blogworthy. MrB is working major overtime to get a book chapter written as well as working on his postdoc research, so he's been at work 12+ hours a day and on weekends. I've been starting some work that I can do at home for the place that I used to work, figuring out the best schedule for that. Hopefully we'll be able to at least go out for a weekend hike or two in February, so you might see a new post or two next month.

Langlaufskiing (Cross country skiing) at Les Près-d'Orvin

Today, for the first time in many years, we tried cross country skiing. We had a great time, but discovered that we have very much to learn and re-learn about cross country skiing. I used to go skiing around my family's farm until I was about 18 and went away to college, and MrB had skied only once or twice before. That was very different from today's skiing on the well prepared trails, and on even the small slopes that we encountered today we had some difficulties. We have a lot of practicing to do, hopefully on a flatter area at first, to get our 'ski legs'.

It was a beautiful day for it, very sunny and about 4-5°C (about 40°F). There was an occasional gusty wind blowing, but it was not too bad. We drove through a gray cloudy layer on the way up, and it was not till we reached very near the top of the hill/mountain (1000-1350 m altitude) that we started to see any snow, and the sun.

I had forgotten how much work your whole body does in this sport. It is amazing exercise, working your legs, shoulders, torso, and uses different muscles than walking. It is even harder work when you are first learning (or re-learning) how to do it. I'm sure we will be quite sore for the next few days, both from working new muscles, and from falling! Going downhill is much trickier than it looks. We have yet to learn the snowplow technique. I never had to use it on the tiny hills I skied on at the farm growing up.

We stopped on the way out for some soup, coffee and beer at a little restaurant that was also a cow farm where they raise Scottish Highland cattle. I had to take a picture, because these are what my mom and dad raise on their farm now. I was a little surprised to see them out here.

Thank you very much to our friends V and N who kindly drove us and patiently waited while we muddled along, giving us tips and helping out. I think V skied about twice as much along the trail as we did because he kept coming back to check on us.

As we drove away from the parking area, a magnificent view of the Alps came up on our right. I tried to get a photo, but it was a bit too dark, and I still have much to learn about the camera. I include it here anyway.

Hunting for the Schalberg Ruins

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to everyone!

Today I made up some more peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, and we headed back to Aesch to find our way to the other ruins that are near Pfeffingen on the map. We made our way up through Pfeffingen (up being the operative word, the entire hike there and through the town was all up hills of various grades) to the trail marker directing us into the woods toward the Ruine Schalberg (15 min). The uphill trend continued through the woods. These castles are of course built on the most advantageous viewing points for the region, which means hills!

About 10 minutes or so into the woods we saw this tree, adorned with Christmas decorations! That's my kind of tree, alive and happy out in the woods, not dead and drying out inside a house. No, we don't have a Christmas tree in our house. We haven't in quite some time, and I'd rather not follow that tradition. But it was a pretty surprise to find a decorated tree out in the middle of the woods.

A ways beyond that we found the first of three sets of ruins, that we think might have been the Münchsberg ruins. There was no sign for them, and they are barely visible. There are only a few crumbling walls left and the trees and moss have taken them over almost completely. They were probably simple watch towers, and were built on two separate outcroppings of rock that overlook the valley where the Klus Valley Vineyards and Domaine Nussbaumer operate.

Roots growing over what was left of a wall...or is it just a stony outcropping? Very hard to tell at this point.


The next ruin we saw had a helpful sign attached to it as well as a ladder to climb up to it. This is the Burgruine Engenstein, and they think that it was built in the first quarter of the thirteenth century, and served as a 'stadthaus' or city hall up until the completion of the Burg Schalberg in 1280.

As we were looking around on the top of this ruin, we saw to our north yet another ruin. Here, finally, must be the elusive Ruine Schalberg! We climbed down from Engenstein, and continued along the trail. The next ruin was indeed the Schalberg ruin. With its crumbling outline it is hard to make out amongst the trees.
Looking up at the ruin from the trail below, and up the trail along the wall of the ruin.

Looking out across the ruins toward the tower. Upon closer inspection, the tower has unfortunately been filled with trash. There is also some graffiti scrawled on it, very sad.


Tree growing up and out of the window.





As we left the Schalberg ruins, we came upon a small natural 'cave' system, that is called Schalberghöhle. It was only marginally a cave, as it was open on both ends, with holes overhead in a couple of places, more like stone archways than a cave. Unfortunately the photos I took did not turn out very well. The sign there said that judging from the archaeological remains found there it had likely been used as a resting place for hunters, and as a hide out.

As we wound our way down off the mountain, we crossed over this small icy stream, that ended at the road in this gorgeous waterfall.

These last two photos give you a better idea of the overlook the castle was built on. The first was taken from the ruins looking down at the horse farm in the valley, and the other is looking up at the ruins from the horse farm.

Ruine Pfeffingen - Homeless shelter?

It has been a busy weekend. Saturday we took a trip to Laufen to Sport Shop Karrer to see about renting langlaufskis (cross country skis). We managed this successfully, even though we had to do it in German. Now we just have to find some snowy place to make use of them! Sunday we took a last walk through the Basel Weinachtsmarkt and had the last cup of glühwein for the season. Then we continued on a walk along the Rhein for the rest of the afternoon.

Monday we decided to head out to the ruins we had seen overlooking the valley during the train ride to Laufen. Looking over our hiking map, we decided these were the Pfeffingen ruins, and we could get there by taking the 11 tram to Aesch and walking to the town of Pfeffingen, about a 20 minute walk. From there, we followed the signs to Ruine Pfeffingen. By the way, that is not snow on the ground, but frost. The moisture in the air around here forms some pretty impressive frost crystals, as you can see in this photo.







This was another fairly extensive castle ruin with bridges leading to it on two sides, and a gorgeous view of the surrounding valleys.


There was the tall tower at the end of the cliff, and a smaller tower at the right of the bridge we walked over, but you couldn't go into either of them. There were warning signs saying something like 'For your safety, and for the protection of the stonework, don't climb on the stonework' and there were no stairs that had been built as in the other towers we've seen.


As we were walking on the trail around the big tower, we saw this sweater that had been rigged up in one of the windows (the only window available to see that area of the interior). Lifting up the corner to peek through, we saw that someone had set up camp inside the restricted area in the ruins, carefully hiding all their gear so that it could not be seen from the viewing area. From the amount of stuff lying around, they had probably been there for some time; likely they remained undiscovered because virtually no-one in Switzerland goes where you aren't allowed to go.

Here you can see the stairs on the left that lead up to a metal rail - the viewing area. Behind this is the interior of the tower, where the little camp was set up. From the rail you could not see any of the person's belongings.

When we were done here, we decided to try to see another three ruins that are on the map near Pfeffingen. We headed out along the fields on the wanderweg, but it was too late and we did not make it to see them. We had to head back to Pfeffingen and Aesch so we could catch the tram home. We may head out tomorrow to explore the other three, but we'll have to remember to check the tram's holiday schedule. The walk from Aesch to Basel is about 5 hours, so it would not be pleasant to miss the last tram home!

Heading away from the ruins, sun shining through a stand of fir trees.
Looking back at the ruins in the distance.
View of the valley with haze wisping through.
Viewing platform in a copse of fir trees where we stopped to eat our lunch.

Wartenberg Ruins

Sunday December 16, 2007
On our numerous trips to Ikea we had seen an old stone tower up on top of a hill overlooking the town of Muttenz, and thought it would be fun to go see it sometime if we could figure out how to get up there. Today I figured we'd take the number 14 tram out to Muttenz-Dorf and see if we could find the way.

When we got off the tram at Muttenz, we realized they were holding their Weinachtsmarkt. It was cold enough that we considered just browsing through the booths there and heading home, but the thought of exploring the ruins kept us going. We decided that if it was still going on when we got back down we'd stop and have some glühwein to warm up.

The little yellow wanderweg (hiking trail) signs had Wartenberg Ruin listed, which sounded promising, so we followed them up the very steep hill to the top. When we got there I was not too badly tired out, amazingly enough. All the walking we've been doing seems to be getting me into better shape, yay! We had seen on the map at the bottom of the hill that there were actually three different ruins. Vorhere Ruin, Mittlere Ruin and Hintere Ruin (something like forward or front ruin, middle ruin and back ruin).

We started at the front ruin, and that turned out to be the most interesting one. It had the most complicated layout of the three. The other two were basically just towers. They had all been at least partially reconstructed at various times over the years, ranging from the 1930s through the 1990s. Unfortunately I haven't been able to find any information about them, even online.

There were what looked like 'bunkers' or pillboxes interspersed between the ruins. I'm no expert, but they were possibly from circa WWII, and were full of leaves to about neck height so we didn't attempt to go in them. We also discovered a bomb shelter type construction that had been included underneath part of the front ruin, possibly during one of the reconstructions. It was filled with graffiti, which seems to be a big problem around here. Thankfully the top part of the ruins were not too terribly defaced.

This is a view of the interior of the front ruin, there were a number of windows and half walls scattered throughout, but it was hard to tell if anyone had ever lived there or if it was built only as a fortification and watch 'tower.' It certainly had an outstanding view of the surrounding countryside.

On the trek from the front ruin to the middle ruin we saw an area that had been dug out of the hillside. This had most likely been used as the quarry for building the original fortifications, as there were still some big blocks lying in a pile along one side.

The middle ruin was a big square watch tower that had originally had at least 3 floors, judging from the holes where the floor joists had been. Stairs and a platform around the outside had been put up at some point so you could go to the top. This is the tower that is visible from the tram and had peaked our interest. There was a wooden bridge across a big ditch leading to the doorway. A wrought iron gate had been put in, probably when it was restored, and this was propped mostly open. There were hanging ferns growing in the corners from the second floor , and one of the windows had a decorative grate that was an interesting contrast to the rest of the rather utilitarian construction.


More windows in the middle ruin, one with a view of the town of Muttenz, you can see the church tower in the top middle. The church was also very well fortified, which is a bit unusual for the area. We kept hearing wafts of Christmas music from the town as we wandered the ruins.

The back ruin was a round tower with incredibly thick walls and funny little skewed holes to help light the interior. There were wooden stairs spiraling up to the top, and it was very dark inside, so those little holes did not do a very good job letting light in. Of course, the walls were about two feet thick, so they were really too small to do much.

There was a courtyard on the far side of this tower surrounded by half fallen rock walls. A fire pit had been set up here, and had obviously been used for picnics. Unfortunately I couldn't get a very good shot of it because there was litter scattered quite liberally around.




This is the view looking out towards Basel from the top of the last tower, and the other is looking out over the back of the hill. Quite a contrast. The built up areas are very crowded, houses and industry packed in side by side. It is nice that they make an effort to keep some of it as fields and forests.

Since the sun was starting to set and we had explored all three of the ruins, we headed back down the hill to look over the rest of the Weinachtsmarkt. We did stop and treat ourselves to a cup of glühwein (the stuff we had in the Barfusserplatz Weinachtsmarkt was more flavorful, this tasted a bit watered down), and shared a vanille-erdbeeren stange (vanilla strawberry pastry) that was delicious. It probably helped that we had worked up quite an appetite from hiking up that hill...unfortunately, my batteries needed charging so I didn't get any photographs of the fortified church or the Weinachtsmarkt.

Noël a Kaysersberg

Friday, November 30, 2007

About halfway through November, my friend made plans to take a drive up to Kaysersberg in the Alsace region of France on the first weekend of their Christmas Market, and wondered if I'd like to go. I agreed, jumping at the chance to get out and explore some more of the area. As an unexpected bonus, MrB got the day off work and was able to come along. It was rather gray and chilly, but that did not put a damper on the day, we were going exploring!

When we arrived around 10am, they had just begun setting up their booths, so we made plans to meet at lunchtime, and MrB and I headed off to look around. There was the tower from an old chateau overlooking the town we wanted to explore, but we took a nice meandering route through the old medieval town to get there.

There were Christmas decorations hung up everywhere, and a pretty little canal ran through the middle of town and under some of the buildings. It was cold enough when we got there that we started looking around for something hot to drink. There were stands selling 'vin chaud' and 'chocolate chaud,' but we ended up climbing up to the tower first, and that warmed us up quite nicely. We did stop to get some of the chocolate chaud later, but it did not live up to expectations, and was just plain old hot chocolate, nothing special.

Christmas decorations










Canal scenes




The view from the top was quite good, though the gray clouds and brown hillsides made it a bit drab. We both agreed that we'd have to try to get back in the spring when everything is in bloom. There were vineyards terracing the hills as far as the eye could see, and from our bird's eye view of the town we could see the the Christmas Market booths set up around the church. You could actually walk up to the top of the tower, and a lady who had just come down as we were starting up told us there were about 113 steps.







We met up with the other two and had a tasty lunch, then headed out of town. Since Ribeauville was on the way home, we decided to stop there as well. We pulled up to the parking area, and there were two storks grazing around a bed of pansies in the middle of the roundabout. Storks are very well received here, and there are stork nests on top of some of the houses and high points in the area towns, as well as portrayed in many of their handicrafts. Ribeauville also had some very cute little Christmas decorations, little white owl figures in a snowy scene, and a stuffed bear blowing bubbles. There was one of these in Kaysersberg as well, but this one was much cuter. I had to take a picture of the owls for my Grandma because she loves them, and has a nice collection of little owl figurines.


While we were there we decided to stop in at this little Patisserie, and had very delicious coffee and desserts. I would highly recommend giving it a try if you are in Ribeauville, the shopkeeper (and owner, I believe) was very nice, and the food was delicious.

Rheinfelden Spa

A friend of mine wanted to treat me to a trip to the Rheinfelden Spa as an early Christmas present. It was a beautiful day for the excursion, sunny and chilly with bright blue skies. I have never been to a spa before, so wasn't sure what to expect, and I was pleasantly surprised. The facilities seem pretty modern and very well kept up, and it wasn't very crowded on this weekday. You do wear a bathing suit, though apparently there are spas in Germany where you can go au naturel. The price is very reasonable, 19CHF for an hour and a half.

There is a big indoor pool that has jets of water along the sides to massage points starting at your feet and up your legs and back. Then you can go to the outdoor pool where there are areas to recline against bubbling jets of water, or sit under very forcefully falling waterfalls to massage your head and shoulders. In the center of the outdoor pool is a whirlpool where the jets propel you around the circle, and inside that is an area where the jets come up from the floor and you can lay out along them so they hit your back, legs or feet.

When you have had your fill of massaging water jets, you can go to a number of saunas, they have both Finnish saunas, where the humidity is very low and the temperature is very high, or you can go into a humid sauna with moderate temperature and very high humidity. We went into only the humid sauna, and made it through about 5-10 minutes. I think it can get dangerous to stay in those for much longer. It was very good for my sinuses though. After a dip in a massage tub that was right outside the sauna for a gentle bubbly massage, we headed to the showers and rinsed off and headed out with only a couple of minutes to spare.

Since it was lunchtime, we headed out into the town to find a place to eat, and then wandered around a bit to walk off the lunch. All in all a very pleasant and relaxing day.

A view up the Rhein.






An old abandoned building, possibly a hotel, that we could see from the spa pools. It stands right on the bank of the Rhein River, which is on the left of this photo, and the spa is to the right.



This old ruined tower also stands on the bank of the Rhein River.







Another tower with a stork's nest.


This is an old building we saw that may or may not have been in the very beginning process of being renovated, it was very hard to tell if it was. You can see in the left window a model goat. Apparently there is a story of a goat saving the town from a fire long ago. In searching for more about the story of the goat, I happened upon this odd little ghost story that takes place in Rheinfelden. I have no idea if it is based on any historical facts, but the descriptions of the area are very good.

Weinachtsmarkt Basel

Saturday the 24th of November was the first day of the Weinachtsmarkt (Christmas Market) in Basel, which continues through the end of December. Vendors set up booths all around the Barfusserplatz and surrounding area (one of the main tram stations in the inner city, seen in this photo with the number 11 tram pulling up), selling a wide variety of Christmas tree ornaments, hand-made crafts and other trinkets and winter clothing, food and drink.

The most popular drink by far is Glühwein, which is heated, spiced red wine. It is rather tasty, though quite sweet, and if you had enough, probably packs quite a punch. I only had a sampling of MrB's, then shared a cup with a couple friends when I went back on Tuesday. It is also nice because it is very hot, and it has been rather chilly around Basel recently. Not below freezing, but you definitely feel chilled if you're out in it for long. On Saturday, instead of the glühwein, I tried what they were calling Weinachts hot chocolate, thinking maybe it would at least have spices in it, but no, it was just regular plain old hot chocolate, nothing special. I was rather disappointed. So far the best hot chocolate ever is in the Musèe d'Orsay's Cafe Hauteur in Paris.


Booth with cauldrons of Glühwein.

A couple shots of the decorated booths. The one in the first photo shows the booth selling the Weinachtsmandeln (cinnamon roasted almonds), another treat that we enjoyed.


Here you see what I have dubbed the 'adverti-cherubim,' because they are holding up a sausage, the food-sellers logo, and a wine bottle and glass.



This was a creepily cute display put up by the local Puppenhausmuseum (Puppet House Museum) of hedgehogs and a few other animals cooking up Christmas treats. You can see a bear back in the left corner. There was also a rabbit and a number of other hedgehogs. One of these days we'll have to go see the actual museum, it's just around the corner from here.



Another fun sight just around the corner from the Weinachtsmarkt is this whirligig fountain. There are a number of interesting metal machines in a big pool that spin around and spit water in all directions. This area is also apparently where you can go to watch movies for about 20 CHF per person. It sounds ridiculously expensive, but then I remember that movies in the U.S. were getting close to that in price before we left, so with the exchange rate, it's probably comparable at this point.

Rainy days

Yesterday I made plans to go out hiking the trail from Aesch to Ettingen again with a friend. This morning we woke up to a gray drizzly day, but I had been so looking forward to another wander in the woods that I decided I wanted to go anyway. "Bring your umbrella!" she said. This time I also had freshly charged batteries in my camera, so I was able to take some nice photos.

We met up and hopped on the 11 tram out to Aesch, and headed off into the drizzle. As we walked through Aesch we passed a big group of people who looked like they had just gotten back from a hike in the woods themselves, all with unfurled umbrellas. One elderly gentleman at the back end of the group looked at us with concern and said something which I would have to guess was something like "Where are your umbrellas?!" since I don't understand much German yet. Not long after that we broke out our umbrellas. The rain was coming down just hard enough that we were getting rather damp without them.

Here are some views along the trail. There is a little birdhouse you can see in the first one, in the tree to the right of the trail. We saw quite a few of these scattered around in the trees.



Most of the leaves have fallen now, but these few still hanging on looked very brilliant against the hazy hills. There were quite a few of these rocky outcroppings in amongst the trees. It looks like this was one of the areas that had been trimmed back at some point, and the rock really stood out.


Here is one example of the huge long wood stacks that are out along some of the trails.


Here is a view as we came down out of the hills and headed toward Ettingen where we caught the tram back to Basel.


We saw this group of young kids out on an expedition to get a Christmas tree. You can see the tree being carried along upside down by one of their chaperones in the middle-front of the group.


This was a farm right outside the town where we saw some sheep, a couple of horses, and a big John Deere tractor. For some reason I didn't realize they were international. There was also a shed further in toward town with some old (possibly antique) farm tools hanging off it, though I suspect they were just for decoration.







The clock is broken! I thought this was a neat little sundial, and it even has a chart detailing the amount of discrepancy to account for depending on what time of year it is. Of course, it doesn't work well when it's cloudy out.

Forest wandering

I took a walk today, and it was very pretty...but unfortunately the batteries had died in the camera, which I discovered when I tried to turn it on to take a picture of a big heron-type bird out in the middle of a farm field. I was planning on meeting the walking group in Aesch to go on their walk, but the tram took longer than I had thought it would to get there, and they were already gone when I arrived. So, I headed out on my own, and had a wonderful hike, up a big hill along some vineyards and through the woods. Beautiful tall hemlock groves, mixed amongst oaks and possibly birch and maple. I am not sure of the identification of the trees here in Europe. It reminded me a lot of the woods around where I grew up, but with more pine and hemlock. I could hear chain saws and a tractor running off somewhere in the distance, and birds, but otherwise it was nice and quiet.

They have some sort of trimming and forest management that they do here, and there were areas where a lot of the trees had been cut down, and a couple of spots where they had planted saplings and put them in protective tubes. And there were HUGE piles of stacked wood with tarps over them. Apparently they get numbered, and the people who they are for can come pick them up when they need wood. I am not sure if that is quite how it works, but that's what I heard second-hand. I am sure I will go again, and will have to take pictures because these piles were truly impressive.

At one point I could see mountains off in the distance, but I am not certain what mountains they were. I'm not sure if you can see the Alps from Basel, but they had snow up in the upper valleys. I believe they were east and a bit south of Basel. It has been gray and cloudy out here much of the time, but the sun was peeking through the clouds today, and made great weather for a hike. I think fall and winter are my favorite time of the year for hiking. I'd rather go walking when it is cooler out than when it is hot.

This weekend MrB and I also went on a wander through another wooded area I had been to earlier in the week with one of my expat friends. If you take the number 8 tram all the way to the end at Neuweilerstrasse, there are a bunch of trails winding through woods and fields. There were quite a few people out riding horses and many others jogging and walking. People do love to get outdoors here. They do in the U. S. too, but maybe there's just more people to the amount of outdoor space here so you see more when you're out walking.

Excursions around Basel

There hasn't been too much going on here recently, just getting settled into our new apartment. It is nice to have a regular sized kitchen to cook in, and I have been making good use of it. I just yesterday made a couple of apple pies to bring to a dinner we were invited to, and made a very tasty pumpkin cake last week, and cranberry bread the week before. We'd better figure out some more good hiking trips to walk off all this tasty food!

We have gone biking the last couple of Sundays, but I didn't take many photos, it's much easier to take photos when you're hiking. I have included a couple photos from the little town of Istein, Germany, that we ended up in one day.


The town was partially surrounded by hills with vineyards, and had a pretty little church. It was so quiet on this Sunday afternoon, you could hear someone cough in their house as you rode by. Even the trains that went through the town, up behind that pinkish house on the hill didn't seem to make much noise.

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Through Centrepoint I have met a couple of other expats, and we took a drive out to Ribeauvillé and Colmar in the Alsace region of France on the 25th of October. Ribeauvillé was a very cute little, easily walkable village, where I took the photos below. There were a lot of wine stores there, and vineyards all around the hills outside the town. Colmar was much more a city, and we only walked around in the center of town area where there were a bunch of shops. I didn't get any photos there. I'd like to go back to Ribeauvillé at some point and check out the castle we saw on the hill over the town. Maybe one weekend I'll have to rent a car so MrB can go with me.

Here is a view up the street as we entered Ribeauvillé .

and a close-up of the interesting store front on the right.

Another view up the street with a castle on the hill overlooking the town.

Close-up of the castle.

Brightly colored houses.

Old house being renovated. It was neat to see what it looks like underneath the bright paint. This one had an area on the ground floor that was originally used to stable animals in the winter - their body heat helped keep the upper floors warmer.

Klus Valley Vineyard Visit

Saturday October 20, 2007

We signed up through Centrepoint for a tour and wine tasting at the Domaine Nussbaumer in the Klus Vineyards. We were somewhat late arriving because the train took longer than we had thought, then we hiked a bit along the wrong trail to get there. But we eventually caught up to the tour group just as the walk through the vineyards was ending. We were able to join in for the tour of the wine production area, where the grapes are first started fermenting, and the celler, where there are huge stainless steel fermenting tanks for the wine to form and ferment over a few months or more. This is a rather small operation, and they actually take in harvests from other, smaller vineyards and process their grapes into wine for them. This is a great service for the small vineyards, because then they don't have to worry about the expense and space required for keeping up the equipment.

After this we sat down in the area where they store their oak wine casks, and got to sample some of their wines, with bread, meat and cheese to help soak up the alcohol. They gave us a sample of three different white wines, and three different red wines. Luckily, we were able to pour our own glasses, so my samples were very small, as I am not that much of a wine drinker. It is interesting to taste a small amount of the different kinds, however, and see how different the flavors can be. Our favorite was a red called Strohwein (Straw Wine). It is so named because they originally used mats of straw to dry the grapes on before making them into wine. Now they use plastic netting, and the grapes are dried for a couple of months before they begin the fermentation process. This results in a richer, more complex, and slightly stronger, sweeter flavor than when fresh grapes are used.

I didn't get any pictures inside, but snapped a few as we were leaving.

St. Crischona Again

Sunday October 14, 2007

Sunday we decided to go for a hike, because the weather was beautiful. I decided I'd try to find the way I had gone before with the group of hikers, to go to St. Crischona again. I sort of remembered the way, we just didn't end up going up the first mega steep hill to the lookout point. The wanderweg signs that point you to St. Crischona take you up a slightly less steep, but possibly longer hill. At any rate, we ended up going through the same fields at the top of the hill that I had hiked through before, so we made it to the same place in the end.



We hiked along the edge of these fields, where people seem to have weekend 'country' huts that they go to. I couldn't tell if they were set up so people could stay overnight, or if they just went for the day. Next to one of them we saw a small pasture with goats that were being naughty and nibbling the neighbors hedge. One of them had made a valiant attempt to climb through the fence to get at some particularly tasty morsel. As we were standing there chuckling about this, a couple walked by and went into the gate for that little hut, then they went down along their hedge, and chased the goats away. I photographed them just after they'd leapt away from the strange noises the man was making and had turned to look back at him.



We stopped at a bench along the edge of some woods, where I took this photo of some cows gathered around the one tree in their pasture. It looks like they cut the hay from the fields then put up electric fences to divide them up, and put their cows out to graze. They have these big water tanks on wheels that they park out in the pasture, since there is no other water source out there. I was thinking that there was no way the cows we had when I was growing up would have stayed in - the barbed wire fences we strung up could barely even keep them in - they were very 'exploratory' cows, prime examples of thinking the grass is always greener on the other side.



The church at St. Crischona was actually open today (maybe because it was Sunday), so we were able to go in and see the stained glass, and were also able to climb to the top of their bell tower for a great view of the area. It was a very hazy day, however, so it was somewhat limited. I got a great shot of the church with a bunch of roses in front, and one of the mostly harvest themed stained glass inside. You can see the window just under the clock, which was as high as you could go up the tower. We were able to see how the tiling for the roof was done in that room, which I have never seen before. Each tile has a nubbin off the back side of it, that rests on the top of a slat of wood underneath and that is all that keeps it from sliding off the roof. We were thinking that wouldn't be very safe in high winds, but I'm not sure that is much of a problem around here.



After enjoying the view, we headed back down around through the woods to the town of Bettingen, where we happened upon a farm stand that was selling fresh picked apples. There was no-one there to watch it, just a scale to weigh your apples on, and a locked cash box. The honor system actually seems to work here, which is very nice. We picked up some apples there, and MrB requested an apple pie for dessert.

Further adventures in Paris

Saturday, October 6, 2007

This day was dedicated to the Louvre, and where I developed the title for the first Paris adventures blog. There is so much to see in this museum that you adopt a kind of 'shuffle,' interrupted only when you want to look at something more closely. We spent the morning looking at the 17-19 century French paintings in the Sully wing, then had lunch at Cafe Richelieu. This was not quite as good as our lunch at Orsay's cafe, but was still tasty. In the afternoon we headed over to the Denon wing, where they have most of their well-known pieces, such as the Mona Lisa, or La Jacond as it is now known, and the Raft of the Medusa by Géricault, which is one MrB particularly wanted to see. It is a huge painting, about 16x23 feet, and surprisingly enough, it was not the largest one in the 'Large format French paintings' gallery. As we were 'shuffling' through to the next big gallery, we passed through a delightful temporary exhibition of Goya prints - caricatures of political and religious figures of his day.

This was also the "Nuit Blanche," or White Night. Apparently, one night a year the museums stay open late, and there are candles and big metal chimneys with designs carved out of them, set out all over the Tuileries Garden that stretches between the Louvre and the Place de la Concorde, including in the main fountain. Then they light them up after it gets dark. I didn't get very good photos because it was at night, and I have no tripod, but you can get a good idea what it looked like anyway. In the first photo below, you can see the two guys who got to wade around in the chilly water in their black top hats and swim suits. We actually sat down in a couple chairs by the main fountain early, before dark, and sat there for what seemed like a looong time while more and more people gathered about in anticipation of the candle-lighting event. It was very chilly by the time the candles and chimneys were lit, so the warmth from the fires was quite welcome.

We didn't make it back into the Louvre that night because the line through security was too long. Even with the Museums Pass you can't bypass security. When we tired of wandering through the crowds in the Garden, we headed back to the Hostel, stopping for crepes at a place on the way. These weren't as good as the ones we had previously from Chez Nicos, but they weren't bad.

Sunday, October 7, 2007

We headed to the Eiffel Tower early in the morning, hoping to beat the crowds. Unfortunately, there was already quite a line, even though we arrived before they opened. We had been waiting about half an hour or so when a guy came over from the front of the line and told us all that there was a problem and they were closing the cash register for our line. Since there was already a huge crowd, we decided to skip the ride to the top for now (we never did make it back this trip), and head over to the Arc de Triomphe. It was a beautiful day, much clearer than it had been previously, though there was still some haze, so it was a good day for looking out over Paris from the top of the Arc de Triomphe.

After this we headed over to the Rue Poncelet to see the Fromagerie Alleose, recommended by our Lonely Planet guidebook as a 'temple to cheese.' While I wouldn't go quite that far, there was certainly a wide variety. We picked up a couple small soft cheeses here, then a couple of baguettes at a stand outside to have for our dinner. We also stopped in a little chocolate shop and picked up a small bag of their very delicious dark chocolate toffee almonds.

From here we wandered over to the Saint Chapelle (photos below), a small church near Notre Dame with a pretty painted interior and very colorful stained glass windows to go with it. Next was the Notre Dame Archaeological Crypt where we read about the history of the area directly under Notre Dame. This was quite interesting, especially since you could see examples of the old Roman and other stone architecture right there in front of you that they had excavated.



Then it was off to Chez Nicos for a lunch of crepes, followed up with some Italian gelati from across the street. The lady there made a beautiful 'rose' of ice cream on the cone, which was quite yummy. Since we were in the area, we headed over to the Catacombs, then to the Panthèon. Here I saw the crypt where Marie and Pierre Curie are now entombed, as well as Victor Hugo and a number of other famous French people. From there we walked over to the gardens outside the Musèe du Luxembourg and relaxed for a while to enjoy the sunset, then ended the evening with a cruise along the Seine on one of the Bateaux Mouches tour boats.

Monday, October 8, 2007

Today we returned to the Louvre and 'shuffled' through much of the exhibits for the Egyptian, Greek, and Roman antiquities, and the 11th - 15th century Italian sculptures. We also went back to the Denon wing to view the Crown Jewels, though I think that there are a number of other objects on display in that same room that are just as impressive, and not quite so crowded around. Then we went back to the paintings and went through the galleries for 15-16th century Netherlands and Germany, and 17th century Flanders and Holland, with the exquisitely detailed still life paintings of flowers with tiny water droplets and insects and other little critters. These are so amazingly painted that they look like you could reach out and shake the water off the flowers.

For lunch we went to Le Roi du Pot au Feu where we had a huge lunch/dinner of beef stew. It was beef, cooked almost like my mom cooks corned beef, with cabbage, potato and carrot, and they also added turnips and green onions and a bone with the marrow in, which I'd never had before. We dug it out and spread it on the toasted baguette that came with the meal. It wasn't too bad, it really didn't have much flavor, and the rest of the meal was delicious. We didn't feel at all hungry for the rest of that day and into the next!

After that we went to the Maison du Miele which was in the same area, where we picked up a couple jars of different flavors of honey and some honey pastilles. Then we headed to the Galleries Lafayette to see the stained glass dome that our guide book described, and perhaps shop a bit. The stained glass was very impressive, and so were the prices! No shopping there except window shopping, unfortunately. Then we headed over to the Montmartre area, to another department store called Tati, which was a total mess, and very unimpressive. We did not do any shopping there either.

Since that shopping foray was unsuccessful, we headed off to explore the English bookstores listed in our little guidebook. The Red Wheelbarrow, owned by a Canadian expat, was very small, and had nothing of interest. The Abbey Bookstore, also owned by a Canadian expat, is one of those fun book stores where there are piles everywhere, and the shelves even slid back and forth to reveal a second layer of bookshelves. It was fun to explore, and he had both new and used books. The owner was very nice and we chatted a bit, but we ended up buying a few less books than we had hoped because his credit card machine was out of tape so he couldn't use it. Probably a good thing for our pocketbooks, but I hated putting the books back - it is much harder to find good books in English over here, especially because we both have such eclectic tastes.

Tuesday, October 9, 2007

We spent the morning enjoying the Rodin Museum and its peaceful garden. This museum, as you might guess, houses a very impressive selection of Rodin's works. He was one of the greatest sculptors ever, I think. He could do very classical work, and the examples we saw were very beautiful and skillfully executed. I had not realized that he had produced work like this, as I am most familiar with the rougher style he adopted a bit later in his career. The Thinker (Le Penseur), The Gates of Hell, and The Burgers of Calais, are some of his more famous pieces.



From the gardens at the Rodin Museum we could see the dome for the Église du Dôme, part of the complex of the Hôtel des Invalides, which the French government had built in the 1670s to house 4000 infirm veterans (info. from the Lonely Planet guidebook). The tomb of Napoleon lies underneath the Église, and the Musée de l'Armée is there as well. The Army Museum houses an impressive collection of arms and armor from the 13th through the 17th centuries. Most of the collection is European, but there are a few pieces from Japan, and the Ottoman, Persian, Mongol, and Chinese civilizations that were mostly given as diplomatic gifts over the years. It gave an impressive overview of the development of firearms during that period, though the labels were sadly lacking. They listed the names of the items, but there was no key to tell which item went with which name. If you didn't know much about the subject, the labels were almost useless - a pity for such a great collection.

We went back to the Orsay museum for a late lunch, and another dose of that tasty spicy hot chocolate. Then we walked through the Tuleries Gardens again, and considered riding the Ferris Wheel, but it was too expensive, so we continued to wander. We walked over to the Grand Palace, which looks like a very impressive building outside, though it was closed so we weren't able to explore inside. Across the street from that is the Petite Palace, which was also closed. Then we walked across the Alexander III bridge, which has very gaudy gold statuary - not real gold, of course, just painted, otherwise they would have been long gone, and returned to the Shakespeare and Co. bookstore, where we found some decently priced used books. We hadn't realized they had used books on our previous visit, as they had them all outside. While we were there it started to rain, so we decided to turn in for the night, since it was getting pretty late. That was the only time it rained during our whole trip.

Wednesday, October 10, 2007

This was our last day in Paris, and we decided to take a walk along the Viaduc des Arts, then return along the top, which is the Promenade Plantée. The Viaduc des Arts has shops and craft and artisan studios along it, though once again, everything looked rather pricey. The Promenade Plantée was very nice, but I think it would be much better in the spring and summer when more of the plants are flowering. One of the buildings along this stretch had huge statues ringing the top of Michelangelo's "Dying Slave" sculpture, a very odd adornment for a building.

After this we went on a hunt for La Maison du Truffe, which we never found, and then went to Harry's Bar, where they invented the Bloody Mary. MrB wanted to sample their Bloody Mary, so we went in and he enjoyed his very well-made drink. Then we stopped at the Café Capucine, where we did not end up getting lunch (see previous post), and continued on to discover Café Dada just at the corner of the Rue Poncelet. We were returning there to get more chocolate almonds, and to pick up a treat for MrB's coworkers. We obtained an amazingly dense flat chocolate cake, which I believe was a flourless chocolate cake, if you've ever had one of those. It was delicious, but you could only eat a small bit because it was so rich. We also picked up a couple of small chocolate delicacies to eat on the train ride home which were a tasty dark chocolate mousse concoction in a pastry shell. The train ride home was once again uneventful, except that we missed the last tram to our neighbourhood because the Swiss border guards stopped us as we were hurrying through the train station from the French part to the Swiss part and out to catch our tram.

All in all a very fun and interesting first trip to Paris! We've already got things in mind to do when we go back...

Paris Adventures (or, the Paris Museum Shuffle)

Thursday, October 4, 2007

We set off for our first adventure in Paris by almost missing the train to Mulhouseville. We were running a bit late because we had miscalculated the amount of time it takes to get from our new apartment to the Basel SBB. Then we had a bit of trouble finding the right gate for the train, and ended up hopping onto it with what we thought was a couple of minutes to spare, only to have it leave about 30 seconds after we sat down! Luckily, the rest of our trip was very uneventful. We were on the 'old' slow train, which takes about 5.5 hours to get to Paris. There is a 'new,' fast one, that takes about 3.5 hours, but it is much more expensive.

The main downside I can see for train travel is the constant diesel smell that permeates the air. Anyone have any hints for avoiding this as much as possible? Perhaps an ideal car to sit in away from the engine? We were in the last one for the ride there, and the first one for the ride back, and it didn't seem to make much difference either way.

We arrived in Paris very late, about quarter to 11, and found our way to the hostel without much trouble. It is in a, shall we say, slightly 'questionable' neighbourhood, at least compared to Basel. The street was pretty noisy with cars driving by and it got even noisier when the French won their rugby match against New Zealand - there was much honking and drunken singing.

Amazingly enough, we managed to get a room alone together rather than being in separate dorm style rooms, which is what we expected. It had a bunkbed, which was the first time I've slept in one - I got the top bunk. I definitely prefer my nice big bed at home, but since we were on econo-budget, can't complain. We didn't plan on spending much time there anyway. The weather was beautiful, in the upper 60s and lower 70s (F) for the whole time we were there, and it only rained one night.


Friday, October 5, 2007

We started out our first day in Paris with a trip to the big white dome that towers over Paris and is visible from almost everywhere in the city - the Sacré-Cœur Basilica. It was built on the butte Montmartre, which is the highest point in Paris. There are many steps to climb up the hill to the basilica at the top. At the bottom, we had some of the African immigrants that cluster around the base of the hill try to get us to let them braid string on our wrists, but I was having none of that and stopped them from even attempting with a very firm Non! Apparently this is a common scam, where they accost tourists and tie these strings around their wrists then demand money from them. The basilica itself was very impressive, and though you aren't allowed to take any pictures inside, we did get some of the gargoyles that adorn the exterior.



Next we headed over to Notre Dame on the Paris Metro. I have to say, this is one of the most useful subway systems I've used, and one of the most crowded. Paris is huge and sprawling, and we found this to be the absolute best way to get around. We had obtained a Paris visité metro pass good for 5 days of unlimited travel, which was incredibly convenient. No stopping to fumble with change or the ticket machines. We also got the 6 day Paris Museums pass which was greatly appreciated when we were able to waltz ahead of the many lines we encountered at the museums and monuments. It seemed to be good for just about everything in Paris except the Eiffel Tower and the Catacombs.

As I am fond of Gothic architecture, Notre Dame has to be one of the most beautiful buildings I have encountered so far. The stained glass there was pretty amazing as well, and of course, the famous gargoyles.


(Side note: Unfortunately, I didn't realize until after I got home that the date stamp, which was also incorrect, was being embedded in the photos I took. I was able to crop it out of many of them, but I had to leave it in some or ruin the picture.)

Since it was now lunch time, we headed for the Musée d'Orsay, where we decided to try out their Cafe des Hauteurs. We had a very tasty meal, and I greatly enjoyed the spiced hot chocolate I ordered on a whim. It had star anise and cinnamon in it, and was very thick - best hot chocolate ever. All in all, the food in Paris is pretty outstanding, we didn't have any meal that we didn't enjoy, though we walked out on one restaurant, the Café Capucine, after waiting at least 15 minutes for a waiter without even any acknowledgement that one was on the way. We ended up at a much better place, Café Dada, more character and I'd like to think better value for the food, but of course, I can't compare since I didn't eat at Café Capucine. But I get ahead of myself....

Orsay has a really outstanding collection, and I would highly recommend a visit there if you're in Paris. It's like a distilled version of some of the best parts of the Louvre, unless antiquities are your favorite part of that collection. We discovered five exquisite pastels by an artist we'd never heard of before who worked in a variety of media in France in the late 1800s - Lucien Lévy-Dhurmer. He apparently was much admired as an artist in his time, but there doesn't seem to be much known about him besides an overview of his career. Unfortunately I didn't get any photos of them, as they were in a darkened exhibit and I need a tripod for photos taken in the dark, but I did manage to find them on the website of a Math teacher in Minnesota so you can see them (thanks for posting them Professor Anderson!) Here are a couple photos from the Art Deco collection, and a mischievous looking Mercury as he 'invents' his caduceus.



We ended the day with crepes at Chez Nicos in the Quartier Latin, and also managed to find the Shakespeare and Co. bookstore, a Paris landmark frequented by numerous literary greats.

More on our further adventures later...

Electrical adventures

Here in Switzerland, when you rent an apartment, standard practice is that they come with no light fixtures. So, you have to buy them and install them yourself, if you're feeling up to it, or call in an electrician. We have four of these lovely holes with wires sticking out of them to attach our new light fixtures to.

I tackled this task today, as I wanted more light in the kitchen to make it easier to cook at night. I had found some screws and plastic drywall anchors at Ikea in their lighting department, and hoped that they would work. Never having done this before I wasn't sure. First, I turned off the breaker for the kitchen/hall/front room. Only it was marked küche/gang/vorne zimmer...not too hard to figure out, luckily! Then, I marked where the screws needed to go - holding the light fixture in place, drilled holes for the drywall anchors, tapped them in, and fastened the fixture in place with the wires hanging through. Now the tricky part - figuring out which was the live wire. Really, there was nothing tricky about it...I just hooked up the wires, screwed in a lightbulb, and turned on the breaker and light switch. The light didn't work, so I tried the wires in another combination, and voila! There was light! Since I was on a roll, I put the one up in the hallway as well.

When night came, it became apparent that the light in the kitchen is too small and dim, with just one bulb, to light the kitchen sufficiently, so I will probably end up switching it out for one of the bigger light fixtures that we got. Unfortunately, I need to get hooks for it, so will have to make another trip out to Ikea first.

Ikea, anyone?

We had a very busy and 'exciting' weekend moving into our new apartment and obtaining furniture to make it liveable. Thursday night (the one week night Ikea is open late) we took our third trip to Ikea to make sure we knew exactly what furniture we wanted, and where it was located in their 'self-service warehouse' area. While we were there we treated ourselves to their standard 'Swedish meatballs and pommes frittes (french fries) with gravy' meal that everyone is so fond of. It is not particularly healthy, but it is tasty, and actually fairly reasonably priced for a meal out in Switzerland - two dinners and two drinks for about 20CHF is very rare around here.

As we were threading our way through the self-service warehouse section scoping out all the furniture box locations, we noticed that there were only three of the couch/beds left that we had selected. Since we wanted two of them, we decided it might be a good idea to buy them then, and have them held till the next day so we wouldn't come back to find them all gone. We made sure that was OK with the customer service people - they have an area where they can hold things, but the space is fairly limited so it is a good idea to check with them first - and went back and made the first furniture purchase for the new apartment! These are fairly small couches (see pic below), but they do fold out into a bed which will be good if we have any visitors.

MrB took Friday off so we could go to Ikea as planned, pick out all the things we needed for the new apartment from their kitchen/bed/bath section, pick up the boxes of furniture that we had already picked out, and load it all onto the rental truck, which we had rented initially from 1-3. We got there early, headed straight to the kitchen section, and wound our way through, ending up with two shopping carts full of stuff. We decided we had better buy some of the boxes we saw on the way out to pack it all up in and make it easier to transport. Very good idea! Since it was just 1pm, the time we had reserved the truck, we decided that we should go through the registers and buy all the little stuff, go rent the truck, load the boxes of stuff on it, then run back into the warehouse to pick up the furniture boxes.

All did not go as smoothly as planned! The person renting the truck to us did not speak any English, so we were unable to get directions on how to use a Mobility rental. We eventually found out that you have to activate it by pressing the card you are given to the pad on the front window, then after the vehicle acknowledges you (this one had a panel that unfolded from under the mirror), you insert the electronic key and turn it on. Unfortunately, we had no idea about the card part, and couldn't figure out why it wasn't starting. Finally we got help from the other person at the desk, who did speak English but had been busy with other people when we were filling out our paperwork, and found out how it all worked. We also noticed that the truck was basically out of gas, and since it was provided in the rental, asked about it. He said he just hadn't had time to fill it up before we got there, and offered to bring us up to the gas station and take care of it when we were ready.

So, about 40 minutes into our rental, we loaded our two carts of stuff into the boxes and onto the truck, and also the two sofa boxes that we had put on hold the night before. Then we headed back into the fray to pick up all the boxes for the furniture we had picked out. We were going for fairly minimalist, since we have no clue where we're headed next, so there wasn't too terribly much, but it still turned out to be more than would fit in the truck for one trip. We got a bed, the bed slats, a mattress, two computer desks, two computer chairs, an end table and a coffee table, a bookcase, a small DVD 'book' case, and a bookshelf/office cabinet thing to store all the computer stuff in. Of course we forgot a couple things - night-stands for the bedroom, and they would be very handy right now, so we're going to have to go back and get them when we get back from Paris.

We had already extended our rental for another hour because of the previous delays, but when we realized there was no way we were going to get the mattress in, and it was now about an hour and a half into our rental time of three hours, and we still had to get the guy and go get gas, we decided we had better see if we could extend it for another hour or more if we could. We had to wait around for about 15 minutes or so for the guy to extricate himself from the rental madness (the last weekend of the month is a big moving month everywhere), and he drove us around to the gas station.

As there was a line, with a couple of huge semis blocking most of the parking lot, he left us with the gas card and the code to use it, and we waited in line. Then, when we finally got up to the pump, we couldn't get it to work! MrB went in to ask the lady how to get it to pump gas, maybe she had to turn it on, or we had to pay first or something. Unfortunately, she didn't speak any English either. By the time she figured out what he was trying to say and came out to show us, the trucker guys on the other side of the gas tank had done something and it was now pumping gas just fine. Unfortunately, I have no clue what they did! So, with a full tank of gas (I'm very glad I wasn't paying for it! It was 1.78 or so per liter, and that tank was something like 60+ liters), we headed out to the highway to make our way back to Basel.

Having never driven here before, I was very nervous. I did manage to get us slightly lost getting off the highway - the street signs around here leave a LOT to be desired - but because of MrB's love of wandering around on extended walks, he had been through the neighbourhood we got lost in, and navigated us out to the street we wanted to be on. We went straight to the new apartment rather than stopping to pick up all our stuff from the studio as originally planned. The truck was too full of Ikea stuff, and we were running terribly late by this point. We still had the mattress on hold back at Ikea, so we were going to have to make another run back and forth anyway.

Unfortunately, by the time we had unloaded the truck with the help of a couple of MrB's co-workers, our rental time was up, and we couldn't start the truck!!! So, we called the guy again, and he gave us the code to punch in for the next reservation so we could get the truck started. We also made a reservation for Saturday morning at 9am-10am so we could get the bed and stuff from the studio over to the new apartment. I was very doubtful we could get this all done in an hour, but that was all that was available so I took it. Luckily, we still had the bed in the studio that we could sleep in for the night.

Saturday morning we were up bright and early, as it takes about an hour to get to Ikea from the center of Basel. We caught the old familiar tram #14, and had an early morning stroll from the tram station to Ikea, where we tried out their chocolate muffins and some coffee. Their breakfast isn't as good as their meatballs, though we didn't try the croissants that seemed very popular with everyone else.

The store didn't open till 9am (the cafe opens at 8:30), so as soon as it opened, we threaded our way through the warehouse to the truck rental area, which is right next to customer service. MrB picked up our mattress from customer service, and I took care of the paperwork for the same old red Mobility truck. Much to our dismay, by the time we got the mattress loaded and were driving out of the Ikea parking lot, it was already 20 after 9! Rushing as much as we dared (we didn't want to get a speeding ticket on top of everything else), we made it to the studio with no problems - luckily managing to find the right way off the highway this time. We hauled all our stuff downstairs from the 5th floor studio (thankfully there is a small elevator in the building) and loaded it into the van as fast as we could possibly go, but by the time we pulled up to the new apartment it was already 10:15, so we left the truck running (didn't want to chance it not starting again), called them to let them know we were running late, and basically threw the boxes off the truck.

Then I left MrB to haul them all up to the apartment, and drove back to Ikea as fast as I could legally go. They have speed-trap cameras everywhere, and since I have no idea where they might be or what they even look like, I kept to the 80km posted speed limit. I have no idea what the general in town speed limit is, as I couldn't find a sign for it anywhere. I made it back by 10:40 or so, and turned in the keys with visions of angry people waiting for their truck. Luckily, there was no-one there except the rental staff, so I was able to turn it in safely.

As I was leaving Ikea, MrB called with a request to pick up some more stuff that we had considered but put off till later. I ended up carrying back another bag full of some couch pillows and drapes for our windows and a laundry sack/cart frame. Some of you are probably not familiar with the Ikea bags, they look pretty small, but fold out into a surprisingly large sack, and mine was stuffed full. I don't think I could have carried anything else! I waited for the #80 bus which stops just up the hill from the Ikea and goes to Aeschenplatz, where I was able to catch another tram to very close to our new apartment. Thankfully, because I couldn't have carried that load very far!

MrB put the bed together after he finished bringing the boxes and mattress upstairs, while I was racing back to Ikea in the truck. When he was done with that, he headed out to the electronics stores (Interdiscount and Mediamarkt) to see if he could find an iron and a drill. He found irons, but no drill. Luckily he ran into a friend, who explained how to get to the store where he could find one, off tram#11 in the M-park. He called me to let me know about the irons he had found, and we decided to meet at the Marktplatz, where the Interdiscount had an iron on sale. While we were there we decided to treat ourselves to lunch at the Mövenpick for making it through the past couple days. We'll have to go back there sometime to enjoy their yummy-looking ice cream dishes, we were both too full from lunch to try them. After lunch, MrB went off to get the drill, and I headed back to the apartment to start putting together some furniture. I managed to put together one of the sofas and most of a computer desk while I was doing laundry and waiting for MrB to get back from his shopping trip. Then we both put together the other computer desk, chairs, and the other sofa and the little end table. We're well on our way to a furnished apartment! At least we have a bed to sleep in now, and just in time, too, as we turned over the keys to the studio today.

By the way, there are no 'flat sheets' here. Instead, they have only a fitted sheet that goes on the mattress, and a duvet (like a quilt, but plain white), with a 'duvet cover' and you sleep directly under that. I am not too fond of this, as I like to have a sheet over me when I get too hot and kick the quilt off. One of MrB's coworkers who is from Mexico, and lived in the US for a while, told me all about her unsuccessful efforts to find a flat sheet, so I guess I'd better get used to it!

Moving Madness!

We seem to have found ourselves a new place to live, finally! We are supposed to pick up the keys tomorrow, and have paid the deposit of three months rent, fairly standard here in Switzerland. Now we have to pack up our belongings yet again and move them to the new place. I can't wait to be in a place that has more than one room, and actually has a functional kitchen instead of this closet! We will be moving from this one room studio to a 1 bedroom apartment, or in Swiss terms, a 2-Zimmer wohnung. The best part is, it has a built in wardrobe, so we won't have to buy one of those monstrosities!

The new place is a bit more than we wanted to be paying in rent, but as a trade-off, it is an older building, circa 1898, that was newly renovated and looks very nice inside, has all tile floors with a floor heating system, and is less than a 5 minute walk from where MrB works! It was very nicely renovated, and the building itself looks very well kept up, with what looks like the original woodwork for the stairways and the doors in our apartment. It also has a larger-than-college-dorm sized refrigerator, and a separate freezer which is not all that common here, and will be very useful. We have yet to see the waschküche (laundry room), kellerabteil (cellar storage area), or bike storage area, but will hopefully get to see all that tomorrow. We also have yet to learn about the laundry schedule, hopefully we'll get more than 1 day a week, or we'll have to buy more clothes!

After we pick up the keys, I've got to head over to the place and get it measured and mapped out, then Thursday we'll be making another evening trip to Ikea to make the final choices on our furniture and kitchenware and all that. Friday we go back to Ikea and pick up all the stuff, pile it in the rental van, drive to the current apartment, pile our belongings in and head over to the new one to unload it all. Luckily, a couple of MrB's coworkers have offered to help carry things up to the new place, though hopefully nothing will be too terribly heavy. We have two hours to do this and get the van back to Ikea. Then we get to spend the weekend putting all the furniture together, and Monday we turn in our keys to the studio.

Studio and closet kitchen

Living room with a door to the balcony, kitchen, and wardrobe in the new place.

New baby and new (well, sorta) wheels!

Congratulations little sister on your new little baby girl from the beaming auntie!!!!


It is a bit unexpected to have your first baby basically ten days early, but I think she was getting too squished in there and needed to get out! Hope you are all doing well and get home from the hospital very soon.







Today was the first day of the Velomarkt, and we went when it opened as planned. Very good thing, as the used bikes were going very quickly. All the new bikes I saw were 700CHF and up, but the used bikes ranged from around 90CHF to 400, quite a bit more affordable if not as spiffy. We managed to find ourselves each a serviceable velo (bike) within the price range we had set ourselves, and we are now on wheels in Basel!

We rode them directly to the local Post to get the bike insurance, then wheeled home. They are currently sitting up on our balcony, as there isn't really any good spot in front of the building to store them. The pizza delivery place downstairs (hmmm, pizza sounds good for dinner tonight!) parks all their cars directly out front, with only room to walk between the cars and the wall of the terrace for the restaurant next door. As there is road work being done on our corner right now, that has also cut down on the bike parking options.

We were also able to pick up a basket for me and bike locks at the Velomarkt, but I think a trip to one of the bike stores is up for this weekend to get some new handle bar grips for my bike, and probably a couple of tire pumps and repair kits would be a good idea as well as cushier seats and seat covers for when it rains. We've seen some pretty amusing seat covers out on the bikes when it rains, I wonder where you can find them.

This afternoon I have to meet MrB at work and we'll go look at yet another apartment. We have one to see today, tomorrow, and Monday. Hopefully one of those will be good, and we can manage to get a successful application processed. Unfortunately, we've had no luck on the three we tried already. Who knew it was so hard to find yourself an apartment in Basel?

At this point in our apartment hunting endeavor, I'd have to highly recommend you only move here if you can get help from your company to have a relocation agent assist you, because it's getting a bit ridiculous. Also, if you can't for some reason get help, at least do yourself a big favor and learn as much German as you can. For one thing, the applications are all in German, and many of the people I've called know only a little English...and I'm starting to feel that my feeble German is a mark against me. :( Ah well, at least I'm getting some practice.

Discovering the countryside

I joined a walking group on their Monday walk today, and it was a gorgeous day for it, mostly sunny and about 60-65 (15-19C) out. I want to learn how to find the way to the network of trails that everyone says is out there. Once you find them, there are lovely helpful signs pointing out the way, but finding the way to them seems somewhat tricky, at least to this newcomer.

View of Basel from the first stop, overlooking the Rhein.








There was quite a bit of uphill at first, but I plugged along and made it up the hills. As one person said, 'it is difficult to hike anywhere in Switzerland and not run into a hill along the way,' so I'd better get used to it! The views were very nice, but do not rival the Alps. We hiked from Friedhof am Hörnli to St. Crischona and back down around through some beautiful woods to Bettingen and then to the starting point. The beginning of the trail was hidden back along the wall to the right as you face Friedhof am Hörnli and along behind some apartment buildings. I hope I can find it again.

Church at St. Crischona.








Woods between St. Crischona and Bettingen.








View of Bettingen.








Restaurant Baslerhof in Bettingen.








House with strange packed-wood sculptures. They looked like they were formed into a ball then wrapped with netting of some sort.






Close-up of the wood-sculptures.
(I took this thinking of Dad and all those hours we spent gathering wood for heat during the winter.)






I think I have to pick up the map I saw at the local Post office for hiking in the area. There is a separate one for biking, and I may have to get that one as well if we get bikes this weekend. We are planning to go to the Mega Velomarkt that is being held on Friday and Saturday. We're hoping to find bikes that we like there that don't cost an arm and a leg. Some of the prices I've seen even for that are pretty eye popping. They have a website at www.velomaerkte.ch, but it is all in German.

First hike in the Alps!

Friday, August 31, 2007








(View from the train)

The group MrB works with plans a group hike once a year, and we were lucky enough to get here in time to join them. We caught the 6:37am train from Basel to Brig with a quick train transfer in Bern. From Brig we took a bus to Leukerbad (1411m altitude), the starting point for the hike.

The first leg of the hike was very steep, 2 hours up the mountain to Gemmi Pass (2350m altitude). Lucky for me there was an option to ride up on the lift, because after about 20 minutes I realized that I wasn't yet up to that much of an uphill climb, with at least another two hours of hiking after that. I took the backpack from MrB, leaving him a bottle of water, and headed back down the mountain, stopping to take some great photos. I think it would be hard to take bad pictures there, it is so beautiful.


I made my way to the lift, and have to say, that was 9.50CHF (with the Halbtax (travel discount card)) well spent! The ride up gave some great views, and I was able to get a couple pix of the group hiking up the trail, as well as some of the trail they were facing. This was apparently a pack horse path that was cut up the face of the mountain for a trade route. I was joined on the lift by two other members of the group, and we enjoyed the view as we waited at the restaurant at the Berghotel Wildstrubel for the rest to toil their way up the mountain. I snapped another pic of the group as they took their last rest before making their way to the top. It was very cold up there with the wind whipping around and they were quite glad to come into the warm restaurant at the top.






The view of the Alps to the south from the restaurant was amazing, and from the other side you could see the end of the Wildstrubel Glacier and the Daubensee. There were clouds blowing around in the Leukerbad valley, but we could see all the way over to the Matterhorn. When the rest of the group arrived at the top, they took a well deserved break and we all had lunch - MrB and I tried Röstli for the first time, his with ham and bacon and mine with tomatos and cheese. It was tasty, but rather greasy. I can see why you would need to hike up the mountain to stay in shape eating that!

The second leg of the hike was from the Gemmi Pass along the Daubensee, a glacier fed lake, past the Berghotel Schwarenbach (built in 1752 as a customs house) to the Sunnbüelbahn (another cable car lift) in Kandersteg. This was along the mountaintop meadows, where we saw some sheep and cows grazing, and lots of huge rocks and pine forests all around. I definitely have to join the BaselWalking group so I can get out there and get in better shape for these longer hikes.








Berghotel Schwarenbach









Looking back along the trail










View from Sunnbüelbahn



Another recommended hike: Train from Basel then Post Bus from Kiental to Griesalp, where there are a lot of hiking trails and gorgeous scenery.

Foray to Ikea and the Basler Zoo

Very warm weekend weather, mid 80s both days (I think, that is what it felt like anyway), and very sunny.

Friday we had a lovely evening with some fellow bloggers, Swiss Job, Golden Shrimp, and Swiss Coffee, and Sara joined us when she got off work. We gathered together at the Rathaus in Marktplatz, then headed down to the Chill am Rhy (white tents at the bottom of the photo) - thanks SwissJob for the write-up, I had no idea what it was called, and I'm afraid I didn't make note of any of the names of the other places we were at that night either. I was too busy enjoying the company and trying to force my brain to remember all the good tips we were getting about life in Basel and where to find things.

Saturday we looked at another apartment, but weren't too impressed for what the rent is. Then we went into the Marktplatz and found the store that was pointed out to us the night before where I could get some Birks. I now have a good pair of Birks to break in, and my feet are happier. From there we headed up to the SBB (main train station in Basel) where we took care of the paperwork and fees to get a Halbtax Abo, which saves money on travelling in the area, then stopped at Mediamarkt to get a hair clipper. The one we brought from the U.S. sounds like a lawnmower even though we have a converter. Since it is about 8 years old at this point, we figured a new one that runs on Euro power might be a good idea. Then, after a quick trip to the grocery store, we headed home and dropped everything off, I put on my Birks and we headed off to find the Ikea.

We caught the #8 tram to Aeschenplatz, switched over to #14 to Pratteln. The entire trip takes about 45 minutes, including walking time. I had a vague recollection of SwissJob's blog (which I can't find on his new blog) about their fun trip to Ikea, but not enough to remember which way to go when we got off the tram. Of course we headed in the wrong direction initially, but it didn't take too long to figure that out. When you get to the Pratteln stop, turn, and walk across the tram tracks. The road curves a bit to the left, and you walk through an underpass under another set of train tracks. Walk on and you'll see on your right the Kentucky Saloon, out in the middle of what is basically industrial wasteland. There is an actual sidewalk along the road (which there probably wouldn't be in the U.S.). When you get to Hohenrainstrasse, turn left and head up to Grussenweg on the right. There is a traffic light here that you can cross at, and head down into the industrial park. As you walk down, the road curves to the left, then the right again, and you see a huge shopping center that was hidden down behind the warehouses. We spent only a couple of hours at Ikea trying to figure out what we might want - we might have spent a bit longer, but they close at 6:30 on Saturday. As it was, we made it through all the areas that we need furniture for, and picked up a catalog. All in all a pretty successful trip.

Sunday we headed up the street for a less than 5 minute walk to the zoo. We had a free pass for one person from our "Welcome to Basel" kit, which was nice. Fee for 1 adult is 16CHF. We spent about 3.5 hours wandering around and had no problem seeing everything in that time. We should have tried to get there earlier, probably when they opened. Not because it was crowded, which it wasn't (at least compared to the National Zoo in DC and the Desert Musem outside Tucson), but because the day was rather warm - in the mid 80s I think, and the animals were pretty sleepy. I had fun petting the ponys' soft noses, and scritched the heads of the pygmy goats and the pot bellied pig. They have three hippos, and I think one is fairly young, but it was hard to tell because two of them were in the water, both of these looked huge, and the one lolling on the bank looked smaller, but all you could see was the back side and tummy. There are about 5 giraffes, 2 of those look like juveniles, some elephants, spectacled bears, a wolf, rhinoceros, crocodiles, a bunch of fish, including sea horses, and quite a number of birds and turtles of all sorts. Their condor colony had built stick nests and seemed to be enjoying the warm, sunny day. There are a few other animals, but since I'm not sure of them all won't list them. I would have to say the highlight of the visit was the baby monkeys - three of the crab-eating macaques had pretty new babies and they were a lot of fun to watch. The mothers don't let the babies get very far at all - they hold on to their tails to keep them from wandering too far. Very handy! There are also two baby lions, but the viewing area was very crowded, and all they were doing was snoozing in a big lion pile, with their mom and dad. Very cute, but not at all active. They might have been better if we had gotten there earlier. Of course I forgot the camera. :( I'm just not used to carrying a camera around with me, since this is the first one I have had since I was in high school...

After our trip to the zoo, we went home and had lunch/dinner then went out for a long wander. We headed up the Rhein on the Grossbasel side, up past the University, then past the Novartis campus/industrial wasteland that is along the Rhein on the north side of Basel. We crossed the border into France (I think the town was Huningue) where the industrial wasteland continued for a bit longer (Ciba and Rhenus have huge complexes there as well, unfortunately none of them made any effort to make it look nice), and eventually switched back over into a walk along a road/path along the bank with houses along on the left, and the Rhein on our right. We continued along to a foot/bike bridge over the Rhein, and crossed over into Germany into the town of Weil am Rhein. As MrB said, three countries in one day, not bad! Then, since I was pretty tired of walking (I'm still getting used to, and in shape for, walking everywhere), we headed back into Basel and caught the tram home.

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Before I forget, a quick note about banking here. They don't like checks, in fact, they don't seem to use checks at all. So forget about bringing traveler's checks, or bank checks, to open a bank account with. Apparently what we should have done was put all our money into our bank in the U.S., and bring enough with us to get us through the first few weeks, then just wire it over, but we didn't realize this. Instead we basically lived off our credit card until we got all the banking hoops jumped through. The particular bank we chose had a week long waiting period before you could even have money wired into it. However, I'm not sure if that would be the case with all banks, and it would probably be different for someone with a lot of money.

You must also realize that quite a few stores here do not accept certain credit cards, or possibly only accept the local version of credit cards. And it also varies between stores of the same name - for instance, some of the Coops (local grocery store) take VISA, Mastercard just fine, but some only take the local card, which is called a Maestro card, and some will take Mastercard but not VISA. The big Mediamarkt, where you can buy electronic goods, doesn't take anything but the local cards - Maestro, Coop bank card, and Post bank card - even though it is a huge (for Switzerland) store located in the main train station complex. So check before you even bother looking for things you might want there to make sure you can pay with cash if needed. Of course, this is not a problem if you are only visiting here.

Still searching

August 20, 2007

We are still searching for a place to live, which is taking up most of my computer time. Unfortunately, we found a great place right off, and applied right away. Only to find out later that it had all been a waste of time because the person who owned it had already promised it to a friend without letting either the management company or the person showing it know about it. We and everyone else involved wasted a bunch of time figuring this out. Now everything else doesn't look so great because we have that one to compare them to, and that one was pretty much perfect in terms of location and how much space we wanted, etc. It even had a spot that looked like it would be a good place to work on stained glass projects if I wanted to...so the hunt continues.

Saturday we made our first foray into Germany to Weil am Rhein for shopping with a friend. We went into what was basically a mall, with a huge grocery store that also has all sorts of other things - kind of a mega Walmart type place. Since we only have a mini-fridge in our temporary digs, we ended up not buying very much, but at least we know the kinds of stuff we can find there, and we also know now how to get the taxes back. Tax is charged automatically when you checkout, but if you don't live in Germany you can get it back by doing some paperwork. Useful to know, especially if you are spending a lot there.

We went for a long walk on Sunday down the St. Alban Rheinweg (along the Rhein river). It is a very nice walk up until you reach the boat locks, past that it is not so great - it turns all industrial again, with train tracks, boat unloading docks, and the resulting factory or warehouse type buildings. We had walked up the other side of the Rhein the previous Sunday, and run into the industrial wasteland that is north Basel on the Kleinbasel side. The Novartis industrial complex is on the other side north of Basel, but apparently once you get north of that, it is nice landscape again. We'll have to buy another bike so hubby and I can both ride out that way. He's borrowing a friend's bike while that person is out of the country.

At any rate, we were out all afternoon. On the way back we wandered around in the Basel Münster, which is currently having work done on it, but you can still go in and look around. It is a very pretty Gothic cathedral with some very nice stained glass windows. I didn't have my camera, and wasn't sure if you could take pictures inside anyway, but I'm sure we'll be back there at some point when I do have my camera. It was sprinkling on and off while we were walking home, but not enough to get us wet. About half an hour after we were safely back in our room it started pouring and didn't let up for most of the night. It is still raining on and off today and probably will be for the rest of the week according to the forecast. A good opportunity to try out our new rain jackets, since it is also supposed to be fairly chilly - in the 50F-70F range I believe. Very comfortable for walking around looking at apartments...

Settling in...

Tuesday August 7, 2007






View to the left of our balcony, temporary apartment.


Our first day here started out rainy, but cleared up by the time we headed out on our first foray into the city. We managed to find our way to the University where MrB will be working, and picked up the paperwork we needed to register to live in Basel. We headed to the immigration office and got that taken care of with no problems. It was 65chf each, and when we find our permanent apartment, the change of address fee is about 25chf. Seems you pay for everything here, though it is no big surprise.

We were able to find out about one health insurance option that the secretary recommended, as it was on the same street as the immigration office. We got a quote from them as well as all the paperwork we'll need to send in if we decide to sign up with them. The lady we spoke with didn't speak English very well, though her English was far better than our German. She asked us if we spoke French, but no luck there. Perhaps someday we will, but learning German is going to be our first priority. Or at least getting a basic command of it. At the end of the interview, we realized that she could have spoken to us in Spanish, as I believe it is her native language, and MrB studied it all through high school and knows it fairly well. I think it would have been much less awkward for her, but we managed, and all turned out fine in the end.

After that we wandered around in the Marktplatz area looking at the shops, and halfheartedly looking for a place to find me some better sandals to walk around in. At the beginning of last week I had an unfortunate incident with my ultra heavy suitcase and my toe which resulted in a rather nastily broken toenail on my big toe. I was able to wear sandals the whole week I was at my in-laws . Good thing, because those and my sneakers were the only shoes not packed in boxes to be shipped to Switzerland. However, they aren't very good to walk around all day in and were giving me blisters. I never found a good alternative, and gave up and started wearing my sneakers the next day.

It started raining again on the walk home. We stopped in at the pizza take out place that is the first floor of our apartment building and got dinner. Every time we go in the building we get to smell the pizza being made and it makes us hungry for pizza! They use some sort of salami rather than pepperoni, and their idea of olives on pizza was a whole TWO olives! but it was tasty pizza. It did drive home that eating out is expensive here. The cost of the pizza itself wasn't too bad, but since we didn't have much in the way of drink or anything, we got a Sprite and a beer with it, and two tiny cups of gelati, and that really added to the price.

That night we were treated to a major thunderstorm that kept us awake for some time. One lightning bolt was so close that the resulting crack of thunder about deafened us for a few minutes! Getting used to this time change is going to take a while...

...and we're off!

Sunday-Monday August 5-6, 2007

With the thunderous roar of the huge jet engines, the New York City lights spread out below us, drifting off into the dark as we head East. This is the biggest plane I've ever been on, but not very different in the room they give you in economy class than any of the other planes I've ridden in. We get a snack, then dinner and a movie. They were showing Shrek the Third, but I figured I'd better try to get some sleep, because by that time it was getting close to 11pm EST. As usual, had trouble sleeping on the plane, even with Dramamine, but at least I wasn't getting airsick. I did get rather twitchy though, not sure if it was from the Dramamine or just being in a small space for an extended period of time. I had the window seat so I got to see Ireland from the air as we flew over. It was a pretty patchwork of green and some beige where the fields had been cut, or had a different crop. We arrived in Dublin without incident, but I wished we could explore the city.

The flight to Zurich was delayed by an hour because the plane we were supposed to fly on was stuck in Düsseldorf, so they ended up pulling a different one in for us. That flight was longer than I expected, though it could have been because I just wanted to be there already. We were pleasantly surprised to see our luggage rolling up to us at the baggage carousel. We had turned our 4 bags over to the airline at JFK, where we let them know that we were continuing on to Zurich rather than staying in Dublin. They had almost labelled the bags for Dublin instead, but we caught them in time. We flew Aer Lingus, and I have to say that the flight was as pleasant as a long flight can be, in my limited experience.

We loaded ourselves up with the crazy heavy bags, and trekked across the street to the train station, where we found our way to the ticket window and managed to get tickets to Basel without any trouble. We were met in Basel by two of the people MrB is working with, and a good thing they had a small station wagon! We loaded it to the gills with our luggage and zipped over to the tiny studio that we were set up with for the first month we're here.

One of the people very kindly stayed to help cart the luggage upstairs, then helped us find our way to the SBB (Basel Train Station) Coop (the only store open late enough for us to get food at that hour) so we could get a few provisions for the next day. We headed back to the studio by ourselves, ate a light snack, and headed to bed...where we realized we'd be sharing the pillow. Ok, no big deal, the pillows are apparently HUGE here! They are about twice the size of a normal pillow in the U.S., which is a good thing for our current situation. *The housekeeper has been notified and we will be getting another pillow when they come to clean on Monday - yay! I'm ok with sharing, but it does result in a rather broken sleep...