Im Kino

The weekend was spent in Sargans with Becky. Or rather, Saturday afternoon was. The weather was beautiful when I walked from the station to her house, and they had been lazing in the garden on an inflatable matress until the sun went behind the mountains (at 3.15, such is life in the Alps). We cooked and chatted and drank beer. It was nice.

Yesterday I wasn't prepared to pay the price of the fare home, so decided to go to Zürich and spend the afternoon there with Becky, and then take the train back home after 7, when it would be free. The weather was grim. Drizzle, fog, freezing cold. On the walk back to the station the rain turned to sleet to snow, and seems to have followed me to Basel today. We went to our favourite café and considered our options over coffee: museum or cinema. There is little else to do on a Sunday.

We decided on the cinema, and half an hour later were sat in the front row (the rest of the seats had been taken- seems everyone had the same idea as us) about to watch The King's Speech. I really enjoyed it. The film itself was beautifully shot and was wonderful to watch on an aesthetic level. But the actual film, the plot, was brilliant, too. Rush and Firth played brilliantly, as did the supporting cast- Timothy Spall as Churchill was a particular treat. But the way they were able to show how much having a stammer can affect a person, force them into a box of fear, and how Albert didn't want to become King was, well, fantastic.

I would see it again, and reccommend you see it yourself.

Beide Basel

As predicted, the Swiss decided not to adopt the Waffeninitiative on Sunday. I mean, taking your gun to an arsenal would completely undermine the Swiss state and bring about a disintegration of the nation, probably leading to Libya invading and splitting the country up. How stupid was I not to realise this? Suprisingly, though, Kanton Zürich voted for the initiative, joining a camp that is usually only filled with French speakers and Basel-Stadt (sometimes Tessin joins the party, too). It's a nice, little, liberal camp. They seem to like foreignors here, and minarets...

Here in the north west there were several other votes, too. One in Basel-Stadt about Tagesschulen (all-day schools, rejected) and one in Basel-Landschaft about subsidies to the theatre here in Basel. Rejected.

But this has raised an interesting situation. Basel-Stadt and Basel-Landschaft are two half-cantons, which were united until 1833, when BL left the original Kanton of Basel. It still isn't recognised in the constitution of Basel Stadt. Together they recieve the same representation in parliament as, say, somewhere as small as Zug. It makes total sense. The interesting situation is this: one of the Gemeinde in BL voted to keep paying subsidies, and apparently votes almost consistently with BS, to which it is physically but not politically joined.

In the papers today and yesterday there were several articles about the possibility of it joining BS, and whether there should actually be two separate cantons anyway. There was a referendum back in the late 60s, which was rejected by the people of BL. Could there be another on the way?

Viele Billete

Now that the Spring semester is finally here I have been given time off work in a string of holidays that start in two weeks' time and last until Easter. Some of the other assistants may think this is unfair, but having only had four weeks off since I started in September (some of them had three weeks off within six weeks of starting...) I don't see the problem here.

Being on some kind of I should probably do something to counteract all of the flights I've taken to limit my carbon footprint and protect that environment thingmy bent, I have booked a lot of train tickets in the past week. I am excited.

After being in London for ten or so days at the start of the Fasnachtsferien I am coming back to Basel for Fasnacht itself before I journey down to Milan for three days with M, on a train journey that promises alpine views and tunnels under mountains.

On Good Friday, the start of my Easter holidays, I am taking three trains on a seven hour journey north-west to the capital of the EU, to stay with Dave in Brussels, before getting the eurostar to London for five days and flying back to Basel from there (perhaps I don't really care about the footprint after all).

Not as action-packed as the Eurotrips of yore, but very exciting nonetheless.
Just need to remember Dutch before I get there, somehow.

Sunntig

Last night Becky came to stay in Basel. Plans of going to Eoipso for cocktails were, however, dashed by too much beer and red wine over dinner (which was, as usual, curry). Today we slept in late, brunched and "did" coffee. Which is basically all you can do here on a Sunday (have I said this before?) unless you go to a museum. Which we didn't. So I came home after she headed back east and spent some leisurely time with the eurostar website and D.H. Lawrence.

Kuchen

Today I put my rested baking talents to use and made some (vegan) vanilla cupcakes with lemon buttercream icing. All because Becky is visiting tomorrow and I wanted to be able to offer her Kaffee und Kuchen, or tea, 'cause I don't think she likes coffee. I think the word for bicarbonate of soda (which is Natron in German but also has the French bicarbonate de sodium on the lable so I was just being stupid when I couldn't find it) is one of the most important words I have learnt. Without it these badboys wouldn't have been possible.

Plättli

Plättli is one of the Swiss words I have learnt since moving to Basel. In High German, it's Kacheln. In English, tiles. Many who have been to Switzerland or have seen photos from here know that many, many design choices (in the broad, general population) were made some point in the early 1970s. Many chose their haircut then, for example. Actually, that's not fair- many have blatantly copied Dame Bonnie Tyler's look in Total Eclipse of the Heart, and are proud that, every now and then they fall apart.

But back to the tiles. Yesterday I moved into a new room in the flat and I was taking a couple of pictures of it earlier today and thought I would take one of the oranges Bad, too. It's the one the boys use, and is so-called for the reason you can see above. Maybe if you showed this picture to your nan she would have flashbacks of your granda holding her hair back in a room that looked very similar...

But all I can say is this: they grow on you. I would love tiles like this next year in Blighty, too.

Waffeninitiative

As we know from past minaret and foreign-criminal experience, the Swiss like to vote for things. It is, after all, their right to start an initiative, collect the signatures and give it to parliament for the whole country to vote on. This time, however, it wasn't started by our friends at the SVP (think halfway between the BNP and the Tories, but just as powerful as the latter). But what is it that the oath-comrades are voting on, I hear you (probably not) ask.

It's like this. When a Swiss man completes his military service, which is obligatory, he's allowed to take his gun away with him and keep it at home, for future use in the army. The initiative wants to put an end to this, and to say that without special license, all weapons must be kept in a military arsenal. Seems simple and sensible enough to me. It is, after all, the Volksinitiative für den Schutz vor Waffengewalt- the initiatve for protection from gun-violence. The opponents see things otherwise, and believe that the whole thing is a leftist attack on traditional Swiss values (which is their typical reasoning).

The vote's on Sunday. We shall see how things turn out.

Nächstes Jahr

This penguin can't stay in Switzerland forever- his L Permit won't let him, you see. So, he's been thinking about the future and what he should do with his easily earnt francs... But what should he do? Left-wing terrorist to bring down the Tories? Buy a lot of cake and get really fat? Internationale prostitutie-spioon? Oh no, none of these, he's jumping back on the studying bandwagon, in none other than Sheffield, South Yorks.

WG-Party

At the weekend we had a party in the Wohngemeinschaft to mark the end of exams and also because one of my housemates moved to Paris yesterday for a semester... I only took three photos, but today at the recycling point we found we'd consumed over eighty cans of beer and over fifty bottles of beer, wine and spirits... it was a bed day yesterday, fo'sho.