Chestnuts roasting on an open fire...

Friday: After returning from our respective office locations on Friday afternoon we met up with Helen again and ventured out to a much larger grocery store so she could show us around and give us some tips. We registered Robert’s bike at the post office, received some mail at the post office, picked up our car, and bought some trash stickers (reminds me of the system in Bryan, OH that Sandy and Tom told me about). In the evening we went to the Jean Tinguely Museum for a Roche & Jazz concert. The museum was designed by Mario Botta (read: very famous Swiss architect). Inside there was a roaming exhibit by artists from the Australian outback which were really quite good and a permanent exhibit consisting of many Jean Tinguely pieces.

Jean Tinguely, interestingly enough, has a huge sculpture in the mall in Columbus, IN called “Chaos I” which is worth the drive (http://www.kid-at-art.com/htdoc/chaos.html)– especially since it sits in a building designed by the same person who designed the Petronas Towers in Malaysia (Cesar Pelli).










Saturday: Now that we have a car we decided to venture outside the town to Lucerne or Luzern in Swiss (http://www.luzern.org/leisure-001-02-en.htm). I highly recommend it – it’s absolutely beautiful with a huge lake and the Alps in the background – and only an hour drive from our apartment. We decided to take a self guided walking tour of the city that took about 2 hours. We were able to see the Chapel Bridge, Water Tower, Spreuer Bridge, Old City Center, and the Lion Monument. There are many things to see and do, but we figured that since it’s only an hour away we could come back several times to take in the Art Museum, Mt. Pilatus, a lake tour, etc.

Sunday: Today we tried our hand at laundry (it’s amazing how much time goes into the simplest activities). It took at least 20 minutes to figure out how the washing machine worked and about the same amount of time for the dryer – we were victorious against the pair and then ventured out for a self-guided tram tour through Basel. There are no straight streets in the entire city and it’s difficult to get your orientation – we have found that we both need a little more experience navigating through the city to get a feel for it. After the tour we were waiting on the tram to take us home and found ourselves in front of what will be the Basel Christmas market (Nov 29-Dec 23). The Christmas markets are a holiday tradition in Europe they sell everything from Christmas decorations, to hand made crafts, to candles and everything in between. They are open in the day and evenings, are held outside, and are beautifully decorated. Vendors have a couple of ways to help you keep warm – gluhwien (hot, spiced red wine) and roasted chestnuts (insert song here). We had our first chestnuts this afternoon and had several apiece before we discovered that they were MUCH better if you didn’t eat the hull (blech!).

Gluhwein: 6 oz. red wine, 1 tsp. honey, 2 whole cloves, 1 cinnamon stick, pinch of nutmeg
Mix all the ingredients and heat them in a saucepan. Stir until honey is dissolved. Pour into a warm mug. (There are TONS of different recipes – you’ll just have to try them all - cheers!)

The eagle has landed

We arrived safely on Wednesday afternoon after an uneventful flight and went straight to 'work'. Helen, our relocation agent, met us at our temporary, furnished apartment and took us out for lunch, helped us start the process of getting a B permit, establish our Swiss bank account, and sign up for tram passes (so that we can get to work). She also showed us the location of the up-coming Christmas market, the beautiful Christmas tree in the city's town hall, and took us to the tourist office to get information about restaurants, transportation, and things to do around town. We were both tired and fell into bed around 8pm.

Yesterday, Thanksgiving, our air shipment arrived with more clothes - thankfully as it is quite cold here - after unpacking everything and putting it away we tried to plug in our alarm clock from home but after about 10 seconds it was no longer blinking the time and smelled like smoke - it is now on the list of things to buy. Next we ventured out to the grocery - it's only about a 7 minute walk from the apartment and it is very small. We spent over 15 minutes just trying to figure out the fabric softener from the laundry detergent, but got by with our handy translation dictionary. Peter, our landlord, showed us the exact route to walk to catch the tram for work - we work at different locations so he had to show us two routes. We asked if he could recommend a place to buy an alarm clock and showed us how to get there walking or via the tram (both take about 20 minutes). We walked over to the mall which is also apartments and the soccer stadium to buy our new alarm clock - we found one with no problem. Thanksgiving dinner consisted of Italian food at a local restaurant which was quite tasty.