Metropol Swiss Q Hotel Basel

What an exciting day in Basel! This morning I was on the bus to a client site and ran into a friend. She showed me a picture in the newspaper of a mob of people standing outside a new electronics store. The picture was from yesterday morning. They were lined up for hours before the store opened.

Anyway it turns out that it's not just a new store; there is an entire new mall! Which is pretty exciting because Basel doesn't really have a mall and this one looks fantastic.
Basel, Basel, Switzerland travelingdiva

... gave us a lot of information not on the signs and plaques next to the paintings. It took us about two hours to go through the collection with the guide as a companion. It was a really great exhibit; very informative and interesting. We learned a lot about Van Gogh during our time there and it was so cool to see how is talent progressed over time, along with his mental instability.

After the exhibit and mom ...

... que frontalier, les bâlois rechgignent clairement à parler Français, me prenant pour une Suisse qui ne fait pas d'effort. Ce n'est qu'en parlant de Sud de la France que j'arrive à faire admettre mes lacunes en allemand et à discuter avec la dame du Musée Juif, seul Musée de Bâle ouvert le lundi. Et bien sur. faire avant de repartir sur ...

... mais c'est déjà dépaysant. après le musée des Beaux Arts le Dimanche Matin, on profite d'un temps digne de celui que j'ai laissé sur Avignon pour aller prendre l'air et la verdure au parc Botanique et zoologique de Mulhouse qui vaut vraiment un détour.

... course drinking stations and small tented dance "clubs".

Most of the way you didn't really have to walk as you got pulled along in the current of bodies. We eventually got to the square next to the church where there was a little more room to maneuver and delicious food to sample. We checked out all the little African shops and stopped to watch cooking displays and mini dance routines.
Basel, Basel, Switzerland travelingdiva

... car to leave, skipping the museum. Once we were back in air conditioned comfort we reflected on the day and thought maybe we should try the amphitheatre as well. We tried to drive there but either it is inaccessible by car or we were very lost. I think in fact the case is both.

We went back to the theatre and parked there then walked the kilometre to the amphitheatre. This is about the time that we would have all been willing to consider kill one another ...

... sheet from my training and that was pretty much all I did. One of the guys at work, BB, lives in the apartment directly above mine. He is also a native English speaker as he hails from England, so he has been great. Tonight he invited me out. First we tinkered with my TV until I figured out how to change the sound on the Swiss channels. The channels from Switzerland have dual sound options. One is in the original programming and the other is in a dubbed language. Usually the ...

I have been given a wonderful welcome here in Basel. My hotel kicks ass and is right by the main train station. I discovered last night that these trains run quite late and eventually shut my windows before they shut down service. This morning I had my free breakfast then tried to find the office long before I was supposed to be there. It is a five minute walk from the hotel which is great, because my skirt ripped as I was walking and I had to ...

... the last challenge. ILS 16 circling 26 and yes we made it. One day has past now and all my thoughts are still turning around this trip. It was one of the most interesting things I have been able to do and I will be thinking about it for a long time. I hope I could give some impressions to the ones who read my lines in this blog. I am looking forward to do something similar again.

... to keep it from tipping. At Magenta we were anticipating a relatively simple trip up to the surface on the lifts, from where we had a few hundred metres of walk along the street to Gare de l'Est. As fate would have it things were not so simple. The last of 2 lifts to the surface decided it would malfuction and not leave the concourse level. As such we had to lug the cases slowly up a few flights of stairs, only to find that we were at another mezzanine with another flight of ...