Yay – I managed to implement it into Movable Type! What? My pretty pretty new layout (at the moment only for the main journal page), thanks to a free template from Ann Stratton, of course!
And now I need to go grocery shopping before the shops close…
So Cindy is gone now, much too soon — but hopefully we’ll manage to meet up again soon. Here some pics taken in the last few days, for you to enjoy:
Cindy in my room — my fouton couch turns in to a (very comfortable, I’ve been told) bed.
As always when I have visitors, it makes me appreciate the beauty of Basel so much more — it’s almost like seeing it for the first time, and it makes me realize again how much I love living here.
The town hall, build from the red sandstone that is found in a lot of old buildings here.
The “Mittlere Brücke” (Middle Bridge), connecting Grossbasel and Kleinbasel (Bigger and Lesser Basel). Sitting at the Rhine is one of my favorite pastimes in summer.
Basel has a very picturesque old town, like this cute stair up from the market square towards university.
A funny sign — the owner of this plant is on vacation and asks passer-bys to “please water the flower from time to time”…
The building of the Economics department of the university — isn’t that figure balancing up there cool? That’s probably what you end up wanting to do if you study Economics… *g*
This last picture was not taken in Basel but in the Zurich zoo, where we went for my brother’s 21st birthday yesterday. They have a brand-new rainforest building, which is gorgeous!
I apologize if the pics mess up the page layout — I will change it one of these days, but that’s a lot of work and will take time, since I’m such a html amateur… But they’re pretty anyway, aren’t they? 🙂
Now, how beautiful is that? It’s the view from my window after a day of incredible rain storms. For a time the rain even fell sideways — it was pretty impressive (although less so when riding your bike *g*).
Cindy will be here soon — I should get going to get her from the train station… Have I mentioned how glad I am to see her again? This summer it’s 15 years that we’ve been friends, from my very first day in school here in Switzerland. I have the very strong feeling this will never change, no matter where our lives will take us. A good feeling, that one…
…updated the travel log with pics from the two Germany trips and some from Märrie’s visit this April.
Feeling domestic today – made lunch for my brother and dad, and just returned from grocery shopping. But for the record I’d like to say that it was Michi’s turn to cook on Friday, Papi’s yesterday, and he’s doing the laundry today. So it’s not as if we follow old-fashioned gender roles — even if it is usually Mami who does the cooking and cleaning, that’s a matter of choice not chauvinism. 🙂
Will head out and face the heat once more shortly — will meet up with my friend Sandra, who’ll start her vacation already this week, the lucky girl! Semester break here in Basel starts very late this year: My friend Regina will also already leave at the end of this week, because that’s when the break starts in Zurich — and Cindy’s break (in Berne) has already started, so she’ll come visit me tomorrow, and stay until Friday. Which is a Very Good Thing, as she’s one of my oldest friends in the world (15 years this August) and I haven’t seen her in ages.
Enough rambling for today — hope everyone is having a good start of the week!
At least I’ll be trying not to. 🙂
The last few days have been either very busy or very lazy — maybe I’ll get the mix right one of these days…
I could finally talk about my paper and got my ideas pretty much shot down. So it’s going to be literature work — comparing Wilde’s Salomé and another text (Johannes by Hermann Sudermann). That text was published 1898 and it’s impossible to buy it anywhere (believe me – I’ve looked), so I spent some time at the German institute’s library, photocopying the whole book. Presence libraries (where you’re not allowed to take books home) suck!
Much less frustrating (on the contrary!) is that I got my travel documentation, the bill for flight and Australia visa, and bought guide books for NZ and Australia. Can’t wait – only six weeks to go!
This weekend has been busy — and very heavy on movie watching. On Friday several friends came over and we had one of our semi-traditional movie nights. We watched A la folie… toujours (with the actress from Amélie, Sleepy Hollow, and Nightmare Before Christmas, so it was almost a Tim Burton night, and a lot of fun! And last night, after work, we went to see The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers at an open-air cinema, which makes it five times that I’ve seen that movie on the big screen — still can’t get enough of it. And sitting in the grass, under the stars, surrounded by trees and with a swimming pool right behind me, gave the whole thing a special appeal — I adore open-air cinemas (we have two every year – one at the pool and one next to the cathedral), I spent way too much money on them every summer…
These days I enjoy that kind of evening spent with friends more than going out clubbing — I’m getting lazy in my old age, I fear! *g*
We have record temperatures, obviously the highest for June for 250 years! Well, at least that means I’m not imagining things… 🙂
The high point of today was when I was walking back to uni between classes, eating a yummy Sundae ice cream with chocolate sauce (from McDonald’s – my secret vice this year). I was walking up the hill from the market square, savoring the deliciously cold and tasty ice cream, when something spoken in English drifted to my ear. It made me smile — for two reasons: For one I enjoyed the feeling of being somewhere else, on vacation, where people don’t speak Swiss German. And at the same time I liked the thought that people from elsewhere come to Basel and get to know my beautiful city.
It was just one of these moments… Later, I sat sweating in my Salome class, the whole concept of my paper just having been overthrown by the teacher, but for some reason, it wasn’t so bad.
t’s too hot here. This June has officially been one of the hottest ever, and it just seems to be getting worse… If I didn’t have to go to uni and read stuff for my next German Lit paper or my fieldtrip to NZ, I’d be fine – but who can think in this heat?
I’m horribly, horribly lethargic and want nothing more than to laze around, drink cold tea (Karkadé that I brought from Sharm el Sheik) and – most importantly – not think! 🙂
I’m just glad I don’t have dance class tonight — I don’t think I could drag myself there, it’s hard enough to leave the house for web programming class, afterwards I’ll be so done for the day!
We had the last dance class of the semester yesterday instead — a small party together with the advanced class. I had to work until 9pm, but went afterwards and had the opportunity to dance several dances, although my regular partner didn’t show up. And now there won’t be any opportunity to dance until next semester, which means the end of October – not fair! You can dance Salsa everywhere, but what about the other stuff, huh?
Anyway, have resolved to try and read a bit Salome literature — hope I can concentrate enough. Have I mentioned that it’s too hot here? *g*
Today is the longest day of the year – I can hardly believe it. To me it feels as if summer has hardly begun, and it’s already supposed to be half over? At least today feels right — it’s hot and sunny, with no cloud in the sky. I had to work the early shift at the retirement home, from 8am to 2.30pm, and when I came outside I was almost overwhelmed by the heat.
There were a lot of people outside, mostly young because of a big youth anti-discrimination festival happening this weekend. Also there’s an open-air ecumenical service in a park tonight, where hopefully a lot of people will go to, too. But truth be told I’m not going to either of these events — at first it was too hot to move, and now I feel pretty tired, and I have to work again tomorrow morning. Simply don’t want to leave the house. Bad Eva, very bad! 🙂
Looking forward to tomorrow afternoon — for the first time this year I’ll go to the open-air pool, which is normally my second home in summer but so far it just never worked out. I love going there, not to swim (I’m not a keen swimmer at all) but to sit in the grass, in the shade of some big tree, feel the warm air and (most importantly) people watch and talk with my friends. There’s always something to be seen — people are simply funny, or weird, or plain interesting, and from time to time gorgeous… 😉
I wish everyone a good Midsummer’s Night!
The site has been down the last few hours. I don’t know what caused the downtime, since my webhost’s site (including the helpdesk) was down, too. They should maybe think of creating an off-server status page, which concerned webmasters can check to see what’s up.
I hope I was the only person trying to access chocolate dream during this time…
I added pics of my family to the woman page as well as a couple more sentences about my parents. All four photos were taken today, thanks to the wonders of digital photography — not the best picture ever of myself, but it’ll do I guess. (Marriage proposals please directed here. *g*)
And now I’ve sat in front of this thing for so long, I just want to get outside and enjoy the sunshine. Chasing after the Salome prof will have to wait, as well as some more emails that I should answer — I’m getting cramps in my shoulders, a sure sign to stop.