Gruss aus Basel

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We arrived in Basel late Thursday evening after a long flight from HK and a transfer flight from Frankfurt. We're staying for 6 nights in Witterswill ~10km outside the city with good friends Vreni & Raymond Kuenzli-Appel and their adorable children, Bjorn & Laura.

The next day we reacquainted ourselves with the tram system and hit the streets of the old town with Catherine Loelinger, who worked with Pat & I when we first met at Sandoz Pharma in 1991 and was in no small part the reason why was Katrina was so named. After so many years, Basel seems a very familar and very comfortable place to walk around. The old town is wonderful, with lovely old architecture and we enjoyed a ride across the Rhine on one of the Faehrli ferry boats, powered only by the water current. While Pat & Catherine chatted for a while, Katrina, Jackson & I headed up the ancient steps of the Muenster (cathaedral) to the very top of the bell tower.

On Saturday, Jackson & I borrowed some bikes and headed off for a 15+km circular ride from Witterswil: Jackson's first experience of riding on the right (wrong??) side of the road. Thankfully, the cars appreciated the fact that we weren't sure where we should be on the road, so we lived to tell the tale. We cycled up a fairly steep road to the Kloster at Mariastein, where we parked up our bikes and looked around the beautiful monastery and steps down to the chapels dug deep inside the cliffs. We enjoyed a cup of coffee/apple juice in the shade of the trees at the nearby cafe, then back to V & R's to join the others.

Today we met up at a restaurant in Oberwil with ex-colleagues and friends of Pat's: Marlies Stockmeyer, Este Stockmeyer, Monika Baumli and respective partners. K, J & I left early to head back into the city, to seek out an internet cafe (this written using the wi-fi at the Starbucks close to Barfusserplatz) and for them to spend some time writing up their journals and doing some homework - as I type K & J are jointly working on some difficult-looking puzzles in a maths workbook! From here, we'll explore the old town further. Basel is hot and sunny, about 27 degrees today, so we may need to splash in a fountain or two along the way.

We've been away less than a week and already we've taken hundreds of photos. Tomorrow we'll have to copy the photos to the laptop and download a few to this blog - watch this space...

M.

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Comments

[Pete Phillips]

glad you guys are having a blast
I can't believe you had 27C in Switzerland. We had about 23C yesterday morning, and now our weather has gone back to wet and wintry! Enjoying the blog posts - keep t hem coming. pete