Rheinfelden Spa

A friend of mine wanted to treat me to a trip to the Rheinfelden Spa as an early Christmas present. It was a beautiful day for the excursion, sunny and chilly with bright blue skies. I have never been to a spa before, so wasn't sure what to expect, and I was pleasantly surprised. The facilities seem pretty modern and very well kept up, and it wasn't very crowded on this weekday. You do wear a bathing suit, though apparently there are spas in Germany where you can go au naturel. The price is very reasonable, 19CHF for an hour and a half.

There is a big indoor pool that has jets of water along the sides to massage points starting at your feet and up your legs and back. Then you can go to the outdoor pool where there are areas to recline against bubbling jets of water, or sit under very forcefully falling waterfalls to massage your head and shoulders. In the center of the outdoor pool is a whirlpool where the jets propel you around the circle, and inside that is an area where the jets come up from the floor and you can lay out along them so they hit your back, legs or feet.

When you have had your fill of massaging water jets, you can go to a number of saunas, they have both Finnish saunas, where the humidity is very low and the temperature is very high, or you can go into a humid sauna with moderate temperature and very high humidity. We went into only the humid sauna, and made it through about 5-10 minutes. I think it can get dangerous to stay in those for much longer. It was very good for my sinuses though. After a dip in a massage tub that was right outside the sauna for a gentle bubbly massage, we headed to the showers and rinsed off and headed out with only a couple of minutes to spare.

Since it was lunchtime, we headed out into the town to find a place to eat, and then wandered around a bit to walk off the lunch. All in all a very pleasant and relaxing day.

A view up the Rhein.






An old abandoned building, possibly a hotel, that we could see from the spa pools. It stands right on the bank of the Rhein River, which is on the left of this photo, and the spa is to the right.



This old ruined tower also stands on the bank of the Rhein River.







Another tower with a stork's nest.


This is an old building we saw that may or may not have been in the very beginning process of being renovated, it was very hard to tell if it was. You can see in the left window a model goat. Apparently there is a story of a goat saving the town from a fire long ago. In searching for more about the story of the goat, I happened upon this odd little ghost story that takes place in Rheinfelden. I have no idea if it is based on any historical facts, but the descriptions of the area are very good.

Weinachtsmarkt Basel

Saturday the 24th of November was the first day of the Weinachtsmarkt (Christmas Market) in Basel, which continues through the end of December. Vendors set up booths all around the Barfusserplatz and surrounding area (one of the main tram stations in the inner city, seen in this photo with the number 11 tram pulling up), selling a wide variety of Christmas tree ornaments, hand-made crafts and other trinkets and winter clothing, food and drink.

The most popular drink by far is Glühwein, which is heated, spiced red wine. It is rather tasty, though quite sweet, and if you had enough, probably packs quite a punch. I only had a sampling of MrB's, then shared a cup with a couple friends when I went back on Tuesday. It is also nice because it is very hot, and it has been rather chilly around Basel recently. Not below freezing, but you definitely feel chilled if you're out in it for long. On Saturday, instead of the glühwein, I tried what they were calling Weinachts hot chocolate, thinking maybe it would at least have spices in it, but no, it was just regular plain old hot chocolate, nothing special. I was rather disappointed. So far the best hot chocolate ever is in the Musèe d'Orsay's Cafe Hauteur in Paris.


Booth with cauldrons of Glühwein.

A couple shots of the decorated booths. The one in the first photo shows the booth selling the Weinachtsmandeln (cinnamon roasted almonds), another treat that we enjoyed.


Here you see what I have dubbed the 'adverti-cherubim,' because they are holding up a sausage, the food-sellers logo, and a wine bottle and glass.



This was a creepily cute display put up by the local Puppenhausmuseum (Puppet House Museum) of hedgehogs and a few other animals cooking up Christmas treats. You can see a bear back in the left corner. There was also a rabbit and a number of other hedgehogs. One of these days we'll have to go see the actual museum, it's just around the corner from here.



Another fun sight just around the corner from the Weinachtsmarkt is this whirligig fountain. There are a number of interesting metal machines in a big pool that spin around and spit water in all directions. This area is also apparently where you can go to watch movies for about 20 CHF per person. It sounds ridiculously expensive, but then I remember that movies in the U.S. were getting close to that in price before we left, so with the exchange rate, it's probably comparable at this point.

Rainy days

Yesterday I made plans to go out hiking the trail from Aesch to Ettingen again with a friend. This morning we woke up to a gray drizzly day, but I had been so looking forward to another wander in the woods that I decided I wanted to go anyway. "Bring your umbrella!" she said. This time I also had freshly charged batteries in my camera, so I was able to take some nice photos.

We met up and hopped on the 11 tram out to Aesch, and headed off into the drizzle. As we walked through Aesch we passed a big group of people who looked like they had just gotten back from a hike in the woods themselves, all with unfurled umbrellas. One elderly gentleman at the back end of the group looked at us with concern and said something which I would have to guess was something like "Where are your umbrellas?!" since I don't understand much German yet. Not long after that we broke out our umbrellas. The rain was coming down just hard enough that we were getting rather damp without them.

Here are some views along the trail. There is a little birdhouse you can see in the first one, in the tree to the right of the trail. We saw quite a few of these scattered around in the trees.



Most of the leaves have fallen now, but these few still hanging on looked very brilliant against the hazy hills. There were quite a few of these rocky outcroppings in amongst the trees. It looks like this was one of the areas that had been trimmed back at some point, and the rock really stood out.


Here is one example of the huge long wood stacks that are out along some of the trails.


Here is a view as we came down out of the hills and headed toward Ettingen where we caught the tram back to Basel.


We saw this group of young kids out on an expedition to get a Christmas tree. You can see the tree being carried along upside down by one of their chaperones in the middle-front of the group.


This was a farm right outside the town where we saw some sheep, a couple of horses, and a big John Deere tractor. For some reason I didn't realize they were international. There was also a shed further in toward town with some old (possibly antique) farm tools hanging off it, though I suspect they were just for decoration.







The clock is broken! I thought this was a neat little sundial, and it even has a chart detailing the amount of discrepancy to account for depending on what time of year it is. Of course, it doesn't work well when it's cloudy out.

Forest wandering

I took a walk today, and it was very pretty...but unfortunately the batteries had died in the camera, which I discovered when I tried to turn it on to take a picture of a big heron-type bird out in the middle of a farm field. I was planning on meeting the walking group in Aesch to go on their walk, but the tram took longer than I had thought it would to get there, and they were already gone when I arrived. So, I headed out on my own, and had a wonderful hike, up a big hill along some vineyards and through the woods. Beautiful tall hemlock groves, mixed amongst oaks and possibly birch and maple. I am not sure of the identification of the trees here in Europe. It reminded me a lot of the woods around where I grew up, but with more pine and hemlock. I could hear chain saws and a tractor running off somewhere in the distance, and birds, but otherwise it was nice and quiet.

They have some sort of trimming and forest management that they do here, and there were areas where a lot of the trees had been cut down, and a couple of spots where they had planted saplings and put them in protective tubes. And there were HUGE piles of stacked wood with tarps over them. Apparently they get numbered, and the people who they are for can come pick them up when they need wood. I am not sure if that is quite how it works, but that's what I heard second-hand. I am sure I will go again, and will have to take pictures because these piles were truly impressive.

At one point I could see mountains off in the distance, but I am not certain what mountains they were. I'm not sure if you can see the Alps from Basel, but they had snow up in the upper valleys. I believe they were east and a bit south of Basel. It has been gray and cloudy out here much of the time, but the sun was peeking through the clouds today, and made great weather for a hike. I think fall and winter are my favorite time of the year for hiking. I'd rather go walking when it is cooler out than when it is hot.

This weekend MrB and I also went on a wander through another wooded area I had been to earlier in the week with one of my expat friends. If you take the number 8 tram all the way to the end at Neuweilerstrasse, there are a bunch of trails winding through woods and fields. There were quite a few people out riding horses and many others jogging and walking. People do love to get outdoors here. They do in the U. S. too, but maybe there's just more people to the amount of outdoor space here so you see more when you're out walking.

Excursions around Basel

There hasn't been too much going on here recently, just getting settled into our new apartment. It is nice to have a regular sized kitchen to cook in, and I have been making good use of it. I just yesterday made a couple of apple pies to bring to a dinner we were invited to, and made a very tasty pumpkin cake last week, and cranberry bread the week before. We'd better figure out some more good hiking trips to walk off all this tasty food!

We have gone biking the last couple of Sundays, but I didn't take many photos, it's much easier to take photos when you're hiking. I have included a couple photos from the little town of Istein, Germany, that we ended up in one day.


The town was partially surrounded by hills with vineyards, and had a pretty little church. It was so quiet on this Sunday afternoon, you could hear someone cough in their house as you rode by. Even the trains that went through the town, up behind that pinkish house on the hill didn't seem to make much noise.

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Through Centrepoint I have met a couple of other expats, and we took a drive out to Ribeauvillé and Colmar in the Alsace region of France on the 25th of October. Ribeauvillé was a very cute little, easily walkable village, where I took the photos below. There were a lot of wine stores there, and vineyards all around the hills outside the town. Colmar was much more a city, and we only walked around in the center of town area where there were a bunch of shops. I didn't get any photos there. I'd like to go back to Ribeauvillé at some point and check out the castle we saw on the hill over the town. Maybe one weekend I'll have to rent a car so MrB can go with me.

Here is a view up the street as we entered Ribeauvillé .

and a close-up of the interesting store front on the right.

Another view up the street with a castle on the hill overlooking the town.

Close-up of the castle.

Brightly colored houses.

Old house being renovated. It was neat to see what it looks like underneath the bright paint. This one had an area on the ground floor that was originally used to stable animals in the winter - their body heat helped keep the upper floors warmer.