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!