Tuesday, September 25, 2007

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.

Friday, September 14, 2007

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.

Monday, September 10, 2007

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.

Monday, September 03, 2007

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.