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.
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