Foray to Ikea and the Basler Zoo

Very warm weekend weather, mid 80s both days (I think, that is what it felt like anyway), and very sunny.

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.

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...

Settling in...

Tuesday August 7, 2007






View to the left of our balcony, temporary apartment.


Our first day here started out rainy, but cleared up by the time we headed out on our first foray into the city. We managed to find our way to the University where MrB will be working, and picked up the paperwork we needed to register to live in Basel. We headed to the immigration office and got that taken care of with no problems. It was 65chf each, and when we find our permanent apartment, the change of address fee is about 25chf. Seems you pay for everything here, though it is no big surprise.

We were able to find out about one health insurance option that the secretary recommended, as it was on the same street as the immigration office. We got a quote from them as well as all the paperwork we'll need to send in if we decide to sign up with them. The lady we spoke with didn't speak English very well, though her English was far better than our German. She asked us if we spoke French, but no luck there. Perhaps someday we will, but learning German is going to be our first priority. Or at least getting a basic command of it. At the end of the interview, we realized that she could have spoken to us in Spanish, as I believe it is her native language, and MrB studied it all through high school and knows it fairly well. I think it would have been much less awkward for her, but we managed, and all turned out fine in the end.

After that we wandered around in the Marktplatz area looking at the shops, and halfheartedly looking for a place to find me some better sandals to walk around in. At the beginning of last week I had an unfortunate incident with my ultra heavy suitcase and my toe which resulted in a rather nastily broken toenail on my big toe. I was able to wear sandals the whole week I was at my in-laws . Good thing, because those and my sneakers were the only shoes not packed in boxes to be shipped to Switzerland. However, they aren't very good to walk around all day in and were giving me blisters. I never found a good alternative, and gave up and started wearing my sneakers the next day.

It started raining again on the walk home. We stopped in at the pizza take out place that is the first floor of our apartment building and got dinner. Every time we go in the building we get to smell the pizza being made and it makes us hungry for pizza! They use some sort of salami rather than pepperoni, and their idea of olives on pizza was a whole TWO olives! but it was tasty pizza. It did drive home that eating out is expensive here. The cost of the pizza itself wasn't too bad, but since we didn't have much in the way of drink or anything, we got a Sprite and a beer with it, and two tiny cups of gelati, and that really added to the price.

That night we were treated to a major thunderstorm that kept us awake for some time. One lightning bolt was so close that the resulting crack of thunder about deafened us for a few minutes! Getting used to this time change is going to take a while...

...and we're off!

Sunday-Monday August 5-6, 2007

With the thunderous roar of the huge jet engines, the New York City lights spread out below us, drifting off into the dark as we head East. This is the biggest plane I've ever been on, but not very different in the room they give you in economy class than any of the other planes I've ridden in. We get a snack, then dinner and a movie. They were showing Shrek the Third, but I figured I'd better try to get some sleep, because by that time it was getting close to 11pm EST. As usual, had trouble sleeping on the plane, even with Dramamine, but at least I wasn't getting airsick. I did get rather twitchy though, not sure if it was from the Dramamine or just being in a small space for an extended period of time. I had the window seat so I got to see Ireland from the air as we flew over. It was a pretty patchwork of green and some beige where the fields had been cut, or had a different crop. We arrived in Dublin without incident, but I wished we could explore the city.

The flight to Zurich was delayed by an hour because the plane we were supposed to fly on was stuck in Düsseldorf, so they ended up pulling a different one in for us. That flight was longer than I expected, though it could have been because I just wanted to be there already. We were pleasantly surprised to see our luggage rolling up to us at the baggage carousel. We had turned our 4 bags over to the airline at JFK, where we let them know that we were continuing on to Zurich rather than staying in Dublin. They had almost labelled the bags for Dublin instead, but we caught them in time. We flew Aer Lingus, and I have to say that the flight was as pleasant as a long flight can be, in my limited experience.

We loaded ourselves up with the crazy heavy bags, and trekked across the street to the train station, where we found our way to the ticket window and managed to get tickets to Basel without any trouble. We were met in Basel by two of the people MrB is working with, and a good thing they had a small station wagon! We loaded it to the gills with our luggage and zipped over to the tiny studio that we were set up with for the first month we're here.

One of the people very kindly stayed to help cart the luggage upstairs, then helped us find our way to the SBB (Basel Train Station) Coop (the only store open late enough for us to get food at that hour) so we could get a few provisions for the next day. We headed back to the studio by ourselves, ate a light snack, and headed to bed...where we realized we'd be sharing the pillow. Ok, no big deal, the pillows are apparently HUGE here! They are about twice the size of a normal pillow in the U.S., which is a good thing for our current situation. *The housekeeper has been notified and we will be getting another pillow when they come to clean on Monday - yay! I'm ok with sharing, but it does result in a rather broken sleep...