...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...