Radio/TV/Internet

At last, we have an entire repertoire of electronics. We were able to set up the stereo after our transformer arrived, but we couldn’t seem to get any AM or FM stations. After dialling into each frequency by hand for several minutes I was able to pick up my first AM station and I couldn’t believe my ears – is it - Dr. Laura!?! Immediately the ON/OFF switch went to the OFF position – we were desperate, but not that desperate! After a couple of days we figured out how to rig the antenna so we could get FM stations with no problem. There is lots of the music from the US and England and plenty of great music from other countries as well. The internet was next – after a six week application process, our equipment arrived in the mail. Luckily, our friend Philip was in town the same day it arrived and stopped by before catching his train back home. All the instructions were in German and Philip is German so it was an easy 1-2-3 process (thanks, Philip!). Lastly, we purchased a brand new TV (first one NEO has ever bought) for our viewing pleasure. CNN, MSNBC Europe, BBC, and BBC World are always in English. There are several stations that broadcast 2 languages simultaneously…you change your stereo TV to mono and listen to one side or the other (GENIUS!).

Museumsnacht

Friday night was Basel's annual Museumsnacht. We bought a pass for 20CHF each and were able to visit 30+ museums in and around Basel from 18:00 - 2:00. Each museum features speakers (the architecture museum had speakers, but they were all German), live music (Kunstmuseum), puppet shows (puppet museum) food and/or drinks (all) and publish a schedule well in advance so you can decide what attractions you're interested in. As you've heard us say before, these museums are TOP QUALITY - we visited: Architecture Museum, Puppet Museum, Foundation Beyeler.

The VIRTA Museum was also included - we didn't make it there on Friday because we had a private tour when we visited in August. It's an architectural wonder. See the pictures here.

Basel City Icons

Basel hosts a lot of Basilisks. What’s a Basilisk you say? The mythical king of the serpents – of course! A Basilisk (or cockatrice) is actually a small dragon with a head like a cock, a tail like a snake and wings like a bat. It is a creature that is born from a spherical, yolkless egg, laid during the days of Sirius (the Dog Star) by a seven-year-old rooster and hatched by a toad. They are displayed all over Basel in fountains, hotel lobbies, statues, etc. They often hold the Basel Stadt shield with a staff. If you see a symbol on a flag it is a black bishop's crozier (a staff with a crook at the end, carried by or before an abbot, bishop, or archbishop as a symbol of office) displayed on a white field with the crook turned toward the left. The symbol has been used in Basel since 1072!

Zurich

We ventured off to Zurich this weekend to visit some museums.

The Museum of Design had a great exhibit of journalistic photographer Rene Burri and a fun exhibit of the history of picnics. They even had a display of plastic-wear that featured all forms of the knife, fork, and spoon including the spork! See pictures of Zurich here.

Casual Conversation

We are currently waiting for some power transformers to arrive in the mail so that we can plug in our stereo. The TV won’t work because the US uses National Television System Committee (NTSC) broadcast standard and Europe uses Phase Alternate Line (PAL). While we search for the perfect throw-away TV, we get to spend a lot of time talking to each other. Since we don’t have access to the internet (at home), TV, radio, or people to tell us the latest ‘news’, our topics of conversations are limited to: Roche, the paperwork that is coming in the mail, the paperwork that needs to be sent or the bill that’s associated with the afore mentioned paperwork. All this chat is absolutely riveting, but it gets a bit stale after a while. Over the past couple of weeks we have chosen philosophy topics to discuss (what is art, are humans social animals, how should you treat your friends, what is knowledge, should you yell “movie” in a crowded fire house, etc.). Each topic usually takes several hours to discuss and is really quite interesting. We’ll send you the entire list if you’re interested – or the associated Steve Martin “Philosophy” monolog if you just want a laugh.

Basler Fasnachts – Carnival!

Basel is considered to have the best carnival celebration in Europe (March 6-8 2006). The carnival atmosphere is everywhere in the city as people prepare for the event. The youth of the city sell fasnacht pins (since 1911) to pay for the carnival activities. We found a shop window that displayed pins from the 50’s - 00’s. The pins come in gold, silver and bronze and are priced 20, 14, 7 CHF ea. People all over town wear them on their coat to show their support.

Kino

Kino is the German word for movie. There is a main theatre street downtown that has many movie theatres as well as theatrical production venues, orchestra halls, and an opera house. The local paper has listing of all the movies which are shown in their original language and have subtitles (English movies have French and German subtitles, French movies have German subtitles, if the movie is in German there are no subtitles). Unfortunately, this particular movie had very important scenes that were spoken in Spanish - I'm sure in the US theaters there were subtitles to translate the dialog into English, but that was not the case here, so we missed the most important part of the movie. The movies are a few months behind from the original US release date. For instance we had the choice of seeing: King Kong, The Family Stone, Narnia, Fun w/Dick & Jane, Harry Potter, Jarhead, several others, and The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada. We decided on The Three Burials… When we arrived at the theatre at 16:30 we were introduced to the price – 17 CHF per ticket (that’s $26 for two tickets for those of you keeping track) and we think that’s the matinee price. We walked up 2 flights of stairs and entered the theatre that had about 100 seats and a small-ish screen. There was definitely no Dolby surround sound, music, or pre-movie trivia or advertising. In Switzerland there are assigned seats at the movies and when you need to pass someone in your row, you are expected to face them, not have your back to them. There were movie previews: Diary of a Geisha, Munich, etc. just like at home. Apparently, Monday is kinotag (movie day) and you can get in for 12 CHF - perhaps we’ll start going to the movies on Monday.

Fit-O-Rama

Fit-O Rama is the name of our gym (I couldn’t make it up if I tried). They have most all the machines we had in our US gym, but not very many of them (only 3 treadmills for instance). Its biggest selling point is that it’s modern and opens at 6am. We are able to get up at 5:35, get dressed and jog there by the time they open. There are no classes that early in the morning, but we were able to go to our first spin class on Sunday at 11:15. The instructor spoke perfect English, but had to do the class in German. It was easy enough to follow along even if we didn’t know what he’s saying – he still kicked our a**. We really miss the air conditioning at the gym – it’s very hot in there AND the free towels that our old gym provided. After our first week we are really glad to get back in to our exercise routine. We are going to try to sign up for some events this year and maybe even the Basel Marathon in September.

Longest Word

No, it’s not what you’re thinking – antidisestablishmentarianism may be the longest word in the English language, but this one: Lebensversicherungsgesellschaft is actually written on the side of a building (see photo)! What does it mean, you ask? When we find out we’ll let you know.

Cash Money

The paper money here is SO beautiful! Credit is not very prevalent here so we look at it all the time. Both the EURO and CHF are colorful and have interesting stories to tell. If you have a few minutes visit these websites – it’s well worth the time.

CHF (Swiss Franc): An interesting fact - CHF has no penny equivalent. If you hover over the notes it will show you what is on the back of each. Also click on The Portrayed Personalities to get some history about each person represented. The Swiss plan to update their money in 2010 – here are the winning entries

EURO: All the EURO notes are the same for each country, but the coins are different. It will show you a picture of each EURO note and tell you a little bit about it. If you click on EURO Coins you can see pictures of those as well.

Oh-Lausanne-a

This weekend we went to Lausanne (about 2 hours S-SW of Basel). Lausanne is located on Lake Geneva and being in the western part of the country the prominent language is French. We went to the Olympic Museum which has a fantastic location on the lake, beautiful grounds, and a compelling theme…The Olympics! The museum has some fantastic exhibits: a history of the founder, a collection of ancient artifacts from the original Greek games (some as old as 2000 BC!), all the torches that have lit the flame at each game, examples of the bronze, silver and gold metals from all the games, and examples of Olympic posters, stamps, coins, etc. from all the games. The picture shows Robert reaching up to the bar that is set at the Olympic record for the high jump (unbelievable!!!). We also went to see a very unusual museum called MUDAC. See our pictures here.

The Happiest Day EVER!!

Ok, perhaps that’s a bit overstated, but I am indeed giddy to the point of skipping I am so happy. Yesterday we signed up for Centrepoint – an expatriate club in Basel that has, among other things, an ENGLISH LIBRARY. Joy, joy – all I can say is JOY! A library with books that I can actually read. Over the last two months I have been able to read Adrift (thanks David) and 8 Centuries of Painting at the Louvre (an art-lovers dream) which are both FANTASTIC books, but I didn't want to read them over and over. Now I have several hundred books to choose from!!! First up: P.G. Wodehouse, Nickel and Dimed, and Freakonomics. I am beside myself with excitement (whoopie!!!)

Happy Three Kings Day!

The traditional twelve days of Christmas begins on Christmas Day and ends on January 6 - Three Kings Day. The children really enjoy this day because they go caroling from house to house get treats and collect money for the church as well. In many homes the Christmas tree is taken down and in some areas are burned in a big bonfire. Tradition indicates that taking down the tree allows for "plündern" (raiding) the sweets, chocolate ornaments wrapped in foil or cookies, which have replaced the sugar plums, are the raiders' rewards. This is not a holiday in our area, but many surrounding cantons (and countries) observe it as a day off. We have a loaf of sweet bread in the office that has 6 ‘rolls’ joined together (5 around the outside and one in the middle). The bakery puts a small king in one of the rolls and if you get that roll you get to wear a paper crown (that comes with the loaf) all day!

World Monument

We found the Salginatobel Bridge (Robert Maillart) on a snowy, sinuous one lane road between Schiers and Schuders Switzerland by following the signs which pointed to the “world monument bridge”. It’s in an absolutely spectacular location and seems to defy gravity. We drove a route around Chur to see two additional bridges, one a spectacular cable-stayed bridge, the other similar to the bridges we saw on Christmas day. Even if you are not a bridge fan, this trip is phenomenal – the journey is as wondrous and beautiful as the destinations. We will happily take this trip again to show YOU the fascination of Switzerland – you will not be disappointed. See pictures here.

Year in Review - 2005

As you may know, Robert and I spent New Year’s Eve 2004 talking about what “the best year ever” would look like. We obviously had a phenomenal year – we got married, trained and participated in several triathlons, and moved to Switzerland - among a hundred other things. It’s hard to believe we were able to accomplish so much and have so much fun in just one year! Thanks to all of you for making our lives richer in so many ways – we couldn’t have done it without you. We hope that 2006 is your “best year ever”.

The Sound of Silence

We love that our dishwasher is “is it really running?” QUIET. I didn’t even know that it was technically possible. This MIRACLE dishwasher makes negative sound AND has a cool, red LED that shines on the floor so you know when it’s running - the light turns off when it’s done! We wish you could be present to not hear it with us!!!