Geburtstag

Me, Becky and Hannah in Cargo Bar

Despite suggestions that I blog about being misunderstood by an NHS telephone-machine today, I have decided to tell you a little about my birthday, which was last Friday. It was made extra-special by the fact that I happen to share it with one of my Swiss housemates.

Friday was a normal day for most of it, though work seemed to go quicker with the thoughts of the New Year's Apéro from 5pm. Once I had drank a few glasses of what turned out to be rather expensive white wine, the English department took me for an après-Apéro in Bar Rouge, which is at the top of the Conference Tower in Basel and had views across the twinkling, night-time city.

Afterwards I headed back to the flat, where enough cannelloni and wine had been produced to feed an army. We sat down, ate, laughed and drank until four in the morning. Even better, the other nine guests at the table conversed in Swiss. I could understand almost all of it.

The next day I woke up feeling slightly worse for wear, but soon recovered, because Becky and Hannah, two of the other assistants, came to visit in the evening. We had some bubbles in my flat before heading to Vapiano (where else?) for pizza and wine, then d'Bar and Cargo Bar for cocktails and beer and general merriment, also ending at four in the morning after a long walk back over the Rhine from Klein Basel.

I had a really great weekend, even if I wasn't in the best of moods to go to work this morning...

Dreikönigstag

Today is the celebration of the Epiphany, which I know to be the day when the three Kings visited the stable in Bethlehem after following the star from the East. I know this because I'm a good little Catholic. Ahem.

Rather than completely ignoring the day like we do in England, the Swiss have a little way of marking it. According to today's copy of the Tages-Anzeiger, this tradition dates back many centuries, though it died out in the C19th and was resurrected in the early C20th. Basically, it involves the Dreikönigsbrot, which is a special tea bread with almonds on top, in which is hidden a small, plastic model of a King/Queen (see photo above). The person who finds the model gets to be the monarch for the day, and doesn't have to do the dishes, gets to decide what film to watch etc.

Unfortunately, my housemates had eaten half of the bread before I even thought of taking a photo of it. Also unfortunately, I didn't find the model, Sämi did... Though, the bread was tasty, and I probably would've choked on the 2cm tall piece of plastic whilst wolfing it down.

(Apologies for the drop in quality of the photos- I got a new camera for Christmas and, whilst it is amazing, I haven't learnt how to use it properly yet).

Schon wieder da

I arrived back to Basel at 1am on Monday, to a toasty warm flat and the thought of returning to work and sorting out everything I needed to after my wallet was stolen in London. Both of these things have been tackled with and achieved. Not too much has been going on, really. Just plodding to and from lessons, standing in queues, eating and drinking copious amounts of tea.


One thing has changed, though. When I moved in to the flat, my flatmates told me that I would have until after Christmas before they stopped talking to me in High German, and would switch to Swiss. Now, those of you in the know will know how scary and incomprehensible Swiss German can seem. Ordinary German words are replaced by (often cute) little utterances that were unknown to me when I arrived in September. So, the German "Guten Tag" (Good day) becomes Grüezi, the German "Kacheln" (tiles) becomes Plättli, and the German "etwas" (something) becomes öppis, all of which I like to throw into conversation now and again.

Add to this a spattering of French words not used in High German, but used in Swiss High German (which is kind of a standard across the various Swiss dialects), and I was soon happily talking about Poulet, Billets and Velos rather than the more Germanic "Hähnchen", "Fahrkarte" and "Fahrräder".

The final casualty in this whole process was the scharfes e, or "funny b", the beloved ß of those North of the border. Apparently it's not been used since the 1930s here. I don't really miss it too much now, either.

Soon, my assimilation into the ways of Swiss will be on the road to completion, and I'll be able to whip out sentences like a pro. That is until I leave the confines of Basel and the Baselbiet, because out there in the remaining swathes of the Deutschschweiz, the dialect is a whole other kettle of fish.

Solothurn

There are some mountains just south of Basel, the Jura. You may have heard of the word jurassic? That's because they found dinosaurs in them there hills. Anyway, today I didn't visit them. I went a little bit south (via Olten) to visit Katie, who is an assistant in Solothurn.

It's not a big city. Nor a big town by UK standards if we're honest. But it is really nice to look at. It's prevailing theme is "baroque" and the streets are lined with beautiful houses and churches, all set up against the Aare.

As it's still Advent, we spent the time wandering around and drinking Glühwein. What else would we do? We have made more energetic plans to visit the Jura once the snow goes away...

Weihnachtsgebäck

A Brit abroad will do a lot to recreate that special feeling of being on home soil for the run-up to Christmas. This Brit may have spent his time happily downing a lot of Glühwein and stuffing his face with Zimtsterne, but there's a little piece of home that has been missing.

Fortunately, M was here for the past three weeks and brought a lot of British loot in his suitcase, like sweets, converse, stuffing mix and mincemeat. Oh yes, you read the last two correctly. Yesterday is was freezing cold again in Basel and the fairy cake tin I bought from Migros almost froze to my hand on the walk home, but the afternoon was spent quite happily baking mince pies and listening to Christmas music on the 'tube.

The reaction to one of my favourite foods was expectedly strange. I can't help but feel that English food tends to have a strange taste to it- think of mincemeat and brown sauce, for example. I once read that in the past British cooks would happily mix sweet and savoury flavours (like the do in North African cuisine now). Anyway, my housemates didn't come across as convinced by mincepies. I wouldn't mind, but on Monday I'm cooking a Christmas dinner with most of the trimmings, and there's a Christmas Cake for dessert... Hopefully they'll be too drunk by then.

Bären in Bern

My time in Switzerland is plodding on slowly towards the Christmas holidays. Aside from dodging the rain that has now replaced the snow, my days have consisted largely of taking language notes on presentations at work and showing clips of Cheryl Cole to show the students how geordies should sound.

Yesterday we decided to go on another daytrip and caught the train south to Bern, the federal capital. Of course we looked at things like the Swiss parliament buildings and the river Aare, and strolled around the Old Town. But there was another aim to our trip: the Bärengraben, or bear pit, for the bear is the animal after which Bern is named (incidentally, so is Berlin). So we wandered down not expecting much but saw one of the bears, and can safely say we know the answer to the age-old question, because there wasn't any woods.

Frankreich

Yesterday morning as I was eating breakfast before work I got a text from one of the other asistants, asking if I wanted to go to Colmar in France to be Christmassy for the day. As the festivities are edging ever closer and France is a lot cheaper than Switzerland, M and I headed up on the train a few hours later.

To be honest, most (/all) or our time was spent drinking vin chaud as it was only 2€ a cup rather than 5chf (3 pounds) at cheapest. I also got to try the previously unknown mulled white wine. This was also delicious. Unfortunately, plans to buy cheese and meat and wine for today were scuppered because we were too tipsy to remember to go to a shop. Oh well. It was a fun day, and we certainly felt a bit more Christmassy on the train home last night.