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...