Happy Anniversary, Me and Reto!

We've been off swanning about in swanky hotels in celebration of our first wedding anniversary over the past few days, and lordy isn't it sad to be home again? Highlights included:

The terrifyingly narrow/snow-covered/winding road we had to take to get there. Which was flanked on one side by the edge of a mountain, and on the other by an enormous yawning chasm that ended in the iciest-looking river you've ever seen. Fortunately we were protected at most times by the uselessest of safety barriers, which was about shin-height (ie. not much help when a bus wants to topple over the edge) and made of wood. Wood, for crying out loud. Old, pathetic wood that has been out in the weather for too long. Oh, and the horn thing that the buses honk when they approach blind corners and want to warn any oncoming traffic that THE RISK OF A PLUNGY, ICY DEATH IS IMMINENT is not charming and reminiscent of childhood, as Reto seems to think. It's alarming and noisy. If I was an oncoming driver I'd probably panic, veer to the wrong side of the road and either die a horrible death in the chasm or t-bone the side of the mountain and block the road meaning that the bus would have to reverse its way to safety. Great.

The food. Oh, the food. We had 6-course dinners both nights we were there, and we had giganto breakfast buffets that sadly I don't think I really did justice to, and we had lots of delicious home-made chocolates in our room that they kept replacing while we were at dinner (not that you get back from a 6-course dinner and think "hmm, what else can I eat?") and there were apples everywhere, really crispy crunchy ones, which was lovely. And .. oh, at dinner one night I did a bit of a salt degustation. There were about 8 different types of salt on offer. I always enjoy buying fancy salt, but it always takes me forever to get through a packet of it so I can never really compare them and tell which ones I like best. At dinner the other night, though, I tried the murray river one from Australia, one from the red sea (guess what colour it was!), one from the black sea (guess what colour it was! I don't think I could seriously use black salt on a regular basis, though. It looks odd), a hawaiian one, and a few from France. The conclusion, however, was disppointing - they all tasted kinda the same. The Australian one wins for reasons of patriotism, though, and also because it was such an attractive shade of pink. Now I just have to finish this stupid enormous packet of Maldon salt I have at home before I can buy some. Other memorable food moments included the baked saffron icecream with sweet pesto (which was weirdweirdweird) and the cheese trolley.

The thermal pools. It was a thermal pool hotel place that we went to, so you'd hope the thermal pools would be a highlight. And they were. We went midnight-thermal-pooling and we went crack-of-dawn-thermal-pooling and we went civilised-middle-of-the-day-thermal-pooling and it was all fantastic. The low-point being after you get out of the thermal pool and you realise the water has sucked all the moisture out of your skin and hair and that you've wildly underestimated your conditioner and moisturiser needs for the weekend. Seeing all the hotel guests wandering between their rooms and the pool in their hotel-supplied bathrobes was funny, though (when do you ever see people in bathrobes?), as was seeing the same strangers you'd seen in their togs all day in the pool wearing real pants at the next table at dinner.

Oh, and I discovered that I can't float. I'm sure I used to be able to when I was a youngster. Reto spent lot of time floating about all over the place (although he seems to think he can only float when he uses his special floating technique of stretching his arms out above his head. Not above as in upwards, obviously) and being smug while my legs sank and I got water in my eyes a lot. No one likes a gloater!

All the romance was nice. Which you would hope, for a first-anniversary holiday.

And then there was the bus back down again. After all that new snow had fallen (and continued to fall and made the road EVEN MORE TREACHEROUS. But we survived, and even better, we forgot to take the bottle of fancy champagne that my sister and her boyfriend got for us for our anniversary (not that we would have had time to drink it in between all the swimming and eating anyway), so we've decided to drink that next Fridy in celebration on Reto being unemployed! Because he quit his job and his PhD a few months ago, in case I didn't mention it. We'll be a no-income family, and what better way to celebrate that than with a bottle of Moet? Hurrah!

My Version

It was four years ago today that Reto and I met. In general I don't remember these things, but since we were both on holidays, since I was keeping a diary at the time, and since he was taking squillions of photos all the time, it's easy to look back and remind myself what the date was.

Stamsund

We were in a town called Stamsund in far, far northern Norway. I had already been there for a week or so, and had planned to leave but then, fortuitously, I twisted my ankle while out bushwalking and decided to stay for a while longer.

Not Stamsund. I think this might be Reine, which was apparently voted the most picturesque town in Norway

The first I remember seeing of Reto was at night, when a bunch of us were sitting outside waiting for the aurora borealis to show up. I'm sure the story would be far more charming if the northern lights had have arrived and we had fallen hopelessly in love under their glowy magnificence or something like that, but instead we sat out in the freezing under the black night sky until we couldn't stand the cold any more, and then I explained to him how to use the washing machine.

What we didn't see. Actually, I saw them for the first time the night after Reto left

We spent the next few days together, sitting in the sun and wandering around and eating blueberries (which were growing all over the place. There's nothing more delicious than fruit you've picked yourself), swimming in the idiotically cold arctic water and eating the icecream that would become our namesake. I spent a good part of this time being kind of confused about what Reto's name was, being constantly sure I had misheard (because what sort of weird name is "Reto" anyway?) and thinking it was rude to ask for clarification.

Our ancestor. Sort of.

Reto left, and our habit of chasing each other from one country to another began, a habit that was to continue for a couple of years before we decided to try spending time in not only the same hemisphere but the same tiny apartment. Actually, there's also a whole bit of the story that I've left out because it involves me hitting Reto over the head repeatedly to make him realise he was hopelessly in love with me, but I don't really like that bit of the story and so it stays out.

And then we lived happily ever after.

It's my story and I say only the best bits stay in.

thankyou Google Images

Partially Broken Husband

As is their habit, the army returned Reto to me in worse condition that that which I sent him to them in. And it's only been a week! So that was a fun weekend for us both of sitting around and listening to him complain, and of looking at his bruises (which were inexplicable and impressive), and of being made to put my hand on his forehead to see if he had a fever. Which, as everyone knows, is a completely pathetic way of judging feverishness. Although apparently not as bad as using our thermometer, which told me that my temperature was 33.7 or something, aka officially wikipedia-standard hypothermic. Which I don't think I was. Happily for Reto, though, according to our thermometer he was also far from being feverish (or even normo-thermic or whatever it's called).

Anyway, I've just posted R back to the army now, so that's all the whining over with* for the time being. Or at least until he phones me ...

mystery bruise

* not that I am complaining about complaining. No one appreciates a good whinge like me. Well, possibly everyone does, but my point is that I like whining just as much as the next person. And sadly Reto hogged all the whiny limelight this weekend.

New Hair

Reto cut my hair and now he thinks he owns it. It looks perfectly normal, in fact better than I had imagined it would (although shorter than I asked for, but we all saw that coming). Now I catch him staring at me quite a bit, and while I always think for a moment "aww, he's gazing at me with love-struck adoration" (today it's four months since our wedding, in case you're interested) I soon realise he's staring at my hair, and he's staring at it critically. He always comments on how uneven he thinks it is, and this morning he said he thought it looked like a boy's haircut. Which is really a criticism of him and his hair-based skills, but I also can't help but hear him saying to me, his shiny new wife "you look like a boy". Grr.

My Boyfriend (Fiance) The SmartyPants

Congratulations to Reto, who has just passed the bar exam! No more studying, no more whinging, no more procrastinating, no more unemployment*!









* Unless you count the next 3 months, of course, with regards to unemployment. And there will probably be some wedding-associated whinging and procrastinating, too. Definitely no studying, though!

It's A Good Thing I Avoid Too Much Introspection...

... because in the last week or so I have had three dreams in which Reto left me or tried to kill me or done me wrong. In the first one he just left me one day, leaving me all distraught and confused (and I subsequently went on to cause a really horrific train/truck accident in which heaps of people died in a really grisly fashion), in the next one he was involved with some other woman who framed me (really stupidly, but apparently enough to convince everyone) for some crime, leaving me to languish forevermore in jail and her and Reto to run off to some tropical island together, and in the last one he tried to push me off a very tall building and then left me dangling from the guttering facing an imminent and inevitable plunge to my end.

I wonder what my subconscious is trying to tell me.

Milestones

Three years ago today (or possibly three years ago tomorrow, no one is really sure) Reto and I met. I thought at first that he either had a relatively poor grasp of English or of social niceties, because basically the first thing he said to me invoved demanding that I give him money (with the benefit of hindsight I suspect that it was a problem with the latter, because I know now that he is really great at speaking English).

After the initial confusion of thinking that I was being robbed, we had a pleasant evening of looking out for the northern lights (because we were up in the arctic circle at the time) and discussing laundry (which was why he wanted my money), followed by a pleasant week of loafing around, eating a lot and swimming in the icy arctic depths of the Norwegian Sea, followed by several relatively unpleasant years of looooong international flights and tearful scenes in airport departure lounges. And now here we are. Who would have thought?

The other significant thing about today is that it is the day that my immediate family became largely unemployed (again). My father is officially the only one of us with a job (again). Well done on rejoining the ranks of daytime TV-watching scum, Steph (not that I watch daytime TV or am scum).

On The Couch

In the predictable manner of people who are supposed to be studying for exams everywhere (as in people everywhere, not exams everywhere), Reto has started doing thousands of things he never did before. Like cooking and doing the washing up, which is a good thing, and like reading random books he finds on the shelves at the library, which as it turns out is a bad thing.

He came home the other day and said to me "I've found something that will change our lives". Hmm. As it turns out it is a book about your self image and how it infuences your behaviour and how you react to things and blahblahblah. It sounds suspiciously like a self-help book. Ever since then, practically every conversation we have had has involved this book in some way ("you only respond like that because you have a static self image. If you were more dynamic you would have..."). It's making me paranoid. I think he might be judging me. Hopefully it won't inspire him to try to become a better person.

Berlin, Grr

Well, we're back. And in my experience there's nothing more annoying than people ranting on their blogs about how great their holidays were, so I have decided to tell you all about The Edited Lowlights Of My Trip To Berlin:

1. My boyfriend forgot my birthday

Well, this isn't strictly true. He didn't actually forget it, he just didn't get me anything (except a card). He was planning to get me something while we were in Berlin, but since we spent the entire time together, in the end I found something I really liked (the world's most excellent umbrella, perfect for both sun and rain) and then he bought it for me. Which was nice and all, but it takes the excitement out of the whole birthday thing, frankly.

2. I mangled my feet

For some reason I didn't bring any summery shoes with me when I came to Switzerland. Apparently I was assuming that I would have broken up with Reto and moved back to Australia before the weather got too warm. As it turns out I was wrong, so I have been stumbling around in sneakers for the last month or so while it has been hot hot hot. In Berlin I bought some fairly excellent Birkenstocks, which look nice but seem to be intent on ripping my feet to shreds. In the end my feet were bandaided up like mummies.

3. It was stupidly hot

It wasn't so bad for the first few days, but the last few were relentlessly sunny and over 30 degrees. I hate summer. Thank god for my fantastic sonnenschirm (umbrella).

4. I was laughed at by bogans

In general the whole of Berlin loved my sonnenschirm (I'm calling it that because it seems less poxy than parasol, less ungainly than sun-umbrella and more truthful than umbrella). Within 10 minutes of buying it, someone had yelled at me from her car how excellent she thought it was. A man manning a book stall said he thought it was totally eccentric (which I took as a compliment). A woman at the zoo thought it was fantastic. I overheard heaps of people talking about it in complimentary terms. This came to a dramatic halt when we went to a distant suburb of Berlin, or possibly a separate town entirely (Oranienburg). Everyone there thought it was the stupidest thing ever. I was goggled at by pregnant teenagers, openly laughed at by some woman in a cafe, who (possibly to her credit) tried at least to stifle her guffawing until I had walked past (although she did not try very hard, and I was only about a step past her when she started bellowing like a wounded buffalo), and I was stared at by countless others. Is it really that startling?

5. We went to see Inland Empire

.. which is the latest David Lynch movie. As anyone who has ever seen any of his movies will know, they are always fairly incomprehensible, but this one really takes the cake, and even more so than you might imagine because all the bits of it that were in polish language were subtitled into german only (as you might expect in Germany, I guess). What a waste of three long hours of my life. Even Reto agrees, and he is David Lynch's biggest fan. The one good point was when a Daddo appeared briefly on the screen, which raised a snicker of surprise from me and also from one other person in the audience (undoubtedly another Australian).

6. We queued for ages to see a dirty bear

Yes, Knut the adorable eisbär (aka "ice bear", which is officially what I am calling polar bears lately because it's just so cute. Which is not a concept you usually associate with german, so you should make the most of it when you can). We went to the zoo because Reto has a bizarre fondness for them, and of course we had to go and see Knut while we were there, and foolishly, we joined the back of the queue like civilised people, instead of just pushing in like everyone else. What a waste of 45 minutes. He was adorably cute though, and much cleaner (as pictured) after he went for an adorably cute swim.

7. I was forced to drink horrible coffee all the time

Apparently Germans are really into putting a lot of milk into their coffee, to the point where it is so weak as to be almost unrecognisable as coffee (and the names of the types of coffee seem to mean different things from one cafe to the next. I never knew what I would get). And even worse, one day at the cafe where we were having brekky the coffee machine was broken so I couldn't have any at all!

8. We spent 20 hours on trains getting there and back

In a bid to be vaguely environmentally aware, we got the train there and back instead of flying. We caught the night train on the way up, which left Basel at 9pm-ish and arrived in Berlin at 7.30am-ish. I slept badly. The carriage we were in looked like some sort of 1980s idea of a prison on a space ship, where everyone in it is in some sort of suspended animation cryogenic deep freeze type thing, and then the ship is attacked by aliens or something and the only survivors are a small child and a wrongly-accused woman and the scariest murderer ever known and they have to work together, never quite trusting each other, in order to survive and get back to earth. And then in the end, just before they land back on earth, the psycho murderer guy brutally slaughters the woman and child, and makes it look like self defense. That's how grim this train was. The way back was slightly better, but there's still no denying it was another 9 hours on a train (half of which was spent travelling backwards).

All in all it was the most excellent holiday I have been on in ages, though. Berlin is fantastic.

Breakfast Is At 1pm Sharp(ish)

Today is Reto's last day at work. Tomorrow we are officially an unemployed household (well, that's not true. Tomorrow is some sort of religious public holiday, and then Reto has a week or so of leave, which we are using to go on a trip to Berlin, but as of the 1st of June we are officially an unemployed household).

Somehow, this isn't how I dreamed the declining years of my 20s would be. Sigh.

It's Like Living In Lucas Heights

It's raining today, so we sat around for ages wondering what we could do that didn't involve being rained on. As it turns out, when Reto moved to Aarau he was given an envelope full of junk (including local information and free tickets to things and so on) by the local council. We went through it all, looking for fun things that might be free, and I pounced when I found a piece of paper with something written on it in english (it's nice to be able to understand things, frankly, without having to stare at words for ages and then dredge the silty lake that is my memory, only to come up with ... well, silt, and maybe some dead fish). Anyway, on this piece of paper was information about the potassium iodide tablets that the local council had kindly provided, and how it is essential to keep them around in case the local nuclear power plant (which is about 10 kilometres away) has some kind of disaster. Apparently if there is a "serious nuclear power plant accident where the safety tank fails" (whatever that means), our only hope of survival, or something like that*, is to take these potassium iodide tablets. But since I am not really living here, I didn't get any! Which means Reto lives but I get a radioactive thyroid and die**! That doesn't seem very fair! (incidentally, I could just go to the chemist and buy some more tablets, but where's the possibility of complaining then? Although I'm sure that even if I was well stocked with life-saving potassium iodide tablets, I would still find things to whinge about in the event of a local nuclear disaster)



* Apparently if this nuclear disaster happens, the potassium iodide will stop radioactive iodine from being absorbed by your thyroid gland. If you don't take the tablets, your newly radioactive thyroid will presumably make you turn into a teenage mutant ninja turtle or spiderman or something, and then you'll die. No doubt hideously.

** Or get turned into spiderman/a teenage mutant ninja turtle. Or possibly a twenty-something mutant ninja turtle, as long as it happens relatively soon.

Strewth

Reto and I were at the pub playing darts last weekend (I'd like to say I was winning, but I wasn't. There seems to be a time between half and one glass of beer when I am really, really bad at darts, and Reto is really quite good. Happily, though, due to the bizarre and annoying rules we play by, we switched scores at the last minute and then I won) and the bartender came and said hello to us. We made a bit of small talk, and he asked us where we were from (this is the english pub, so it was all in the lingua franca, aka english). I said I was from Australia and then we had a short and peculiar conversation about cricket (I don't think I or the bartender knew what we were talking about). Then the bartender asked Reto if he was Australian too. Reto said that he was from Switzerland. The bartender suggested that maybe he (Reto) has just been spending too much time with me.

Call me biased, but Reto doesn't sound Australian at all. When we first met I thought he sounded like he had a bit of an American accent when he spoke english (as did numerous other Australians who met him subsequently), but I would never have thought he was a native english speaker (he has too many weird ways of expressing himself in english to pass himself off as a non-ESL person). On several occasions over the last few years, though, people have assumed he is Australian after having a conversation with him. Probably because I am Australian, yes, but really. In my opinion, it only takes about 2 seconds of listening to him to realise that he has some bizarre European accent, and this is made all the more obvious when he tries to be an Australian. I tried to teach him to say "ya flamin' galah" the other day, with endearing and predictably bad results.

Everyone's A Critic

You know how they occasionally make school kiddies participate in projects aimed at making the local area more "beautiful"? Yesterday Reto and I went to his sister's place, which is in the general vicinity of one of Reto's former schools. There is an unattractive tunnel near the train station that apparently Reto and his school colleagues were each allocated a section of to paint. Having seen the section that Reto painted, I don't think it is unreasonable to say that art might not be his one true talent, but I also think that the graffitist who wrote "Alles ist Scheisse" over the top of it was probably being a bit harsh.

Catch Of The Day

The sun is shining, the birds are chirping, my sunburn is receding and I am sick.

Somehow, it seems, all the (semi-)relentless holidaying I have done for the last 2 weeks has left me weak and vulnerable, and now I am getting my revolting revenge on Reto for making me put up with his recent-ish bout of incessant coughing and spluttering and nose-blowing. Yes, I have a cold, and now I am the one creating seas of snotty tissues, I am the one waking up in the night to cough and snort and whinge, I am the one who lolls in bed all day and is waited on hand and foot.

Possibly surprisingly, Reto is doing quite a good job of the nurse-maiding. He came home especially at lunch time yesterday to drop off an emergency delivery of Vicks, he made chicken noodle soup last night (admittedly from a packet, but whatever), he has been force-feeding me oranges, and aside from the odd bout of yawning, he hardly complains at all about the constant interruptions to his sleep that come from me waking up every half hour or so to blow my nose and cough up phlegm. What a sweetheart.

We Couldn't Be Heroes

When Reto and I were in Nice we saw a woman have her handbag stolen. Well, we didn't actually see it, but we saw her thief for the evening running down the street towards us (and also towards his getaway accomplice lurking on an idling motorbike just behind us), and then we saw her running after him yelling "Stop him! He's got my handbag!".

Reto and I stood and goggled.

The woman whose handbag it was (elderly-ish English tourist and female friend of similar age) caught up in time to see the motorbike sputter off, and to make stiff-upper-lip type comments within our hearing about how it was only money. She and her friend walked off and Reto and I were left to contemplate.

I've always thought of myself as the useful type who would stick a leg out or give a well-timed shove at the crucial moment and trip the thief/assailant, thus preventing his getaway and saving the day (I'm sure in this little scene there are always other useful types around who can then restrain said assailant and save me from having to rely on my own strength or agility), but apparently I am not that type after all. I'm sure we have all the usual excuses of how quickly it all happened, and how it took a moment to realise what was going on and by then it was too late, and those are legitimate excuses, but I still felt a bit crap about my total lack of assistance.

The strap of the handbag was flailing out to the side as he ran, and I was close enough that I could have easily reached it. The thief himself was within arm's reach of me. I could have easily done something, and the fact that I am not really sure what that might have been, nor what the consequences of that might have been, is not really much consolation.

Contemplating on what could have happened differently occupied most of our conversation for the rest of the night. We both felt bad for not doing anything. Was the woman disappointed that we didn't help? Was she surprised? Would she have been more annoyed or less if we had apologised for not helping (maybe she excused our inaction because she thought we didn't understand what she was yelling)? Why didn't we do anything? What could we have done? Would the thief's interests have been more in fighting back and keeping the bag (if we had tried to grab it back from him) or in getting away? Would he have retaliated against us if we had have done anything? What was he stealing it for anyway? How would we have felt if we were the ones robbed (Reto had already lost his credit card by that point so he would have had less to lose than me, grr)? Would it have made it worse if two able-bodied bystanders had stood around watching and not helping?

I don't know what any of the answers are, but I did give my handbag more thought after that. I just hope I don't one day turn into one of those people who wears a money belt.

[Insert Moronic "Nice" Pun Here]

Reto and I spent the last four days on holiday in Nice. We were planning to go somewhere, and, after much arguing, we decided to go to wherever we could get the cheapest flight. Nice won with a ludicrously low price, but we were both secretly disappointed that we didn't get to go to Madrid instead.

Nice was nice, though. Assorted high/low/interesting points follow, in no particular order, illustrated with photos of dubious relevance:

• Owing to a very early flight on Saturday morning we stayed with my friend Cecile in Basel on Friday night. This involved, among other things, eating lots of excellent raclette, which is always entertaining. Aah, cheese;
  
  
• I was the only person on the entire flight who had any difficulty at the airport! I had to fill in customs forms and then re-queue and be asked questions and be quizzed on whether I live in Norway or not! Damn those Australian passports;
  


• Reto lost his bank card thing within about half an hour of getting off the plane in France. Really, it was a Saturday morning and the bank in question apparently didn't open again until Tuesday morning, the day we were coming home, so guess who had to pay for everything? It all seems a little bit too convenient, if you ask me;
  


• We had bad luck with buses. We missed them, we caught the wrong ones, we were kidnapped by an angry bus driver with an ipod who wouldn't let us out until we got to the airport (which was about 15 minutes past where we wanted to go). On the up side, I suppose we saw more stuff than we would have otherwise, and without the bother of having to walk too far;

• I was verbally assaulted by mean waiters. Sigh;

• The whole of Nice seems to be currently under construction. Around every corner was more scaffolding, more machinery, more noise of digging and building and destruction, more of whatever noise putting down new tram tracks makes, more repaving and painting and so on. All of which made for a lot of noise and a lot of piles of dirt and a lot of taking of detours;
  


• Nice and surrounding areas seem to be the other home of Australian flora. I haven't seen so many gum trees in ages;


• I discovered that I have less moral fortitude than I imagined (see another post, possibly tomorrow's), or possibly just that I am a bit of a wimp;
  


• Monaco is excellent. There is really something to be said for these ludicrously rich tax-haven countries in terms of the loveliness of the surroundings. The beaches there have a far better quality of stones on them (not sand, but not the enormous rocks that you find in boring downmarket Nice either. In Monaco it's more like gravel, but pleasant rounded wave-worn gravel). The streets are pleasantly free of dog poo (also in contrast to downmarket Nice). The boats and the cars are ludicrously fancy (I don't care at all, but even I was happy to stand around gawking. It was also interesting to see how many smart cars and minis there were among the ferraris and lamborghinis outside the casino, which I suppose may have been a stab at environmental friendliness, or possibly people admitting that it's impossible to keep up with the Monaco Jonses).People who don't seem to be working wear suits, or at least blazers and nice shoes with their jeans*. I didn't witness any crime in Monaco, and no one yelled at me. Sadly I got sunburnt there, and kind of exhausted from walking up and down all the ridiculously steep hills, and worn out from following all the rules (don't walk on the grass! Don't have picnics! Don't litter! Don't touch anything!) but it was sooo much fancier than Nice. Kind of like Switzerland, actually, but in a far better way, hahah;
  
  
• I saw Australians for the first time in months. They (we) were everywhere, although not as much as English people were;
  


• I ate some unbearably delicious food. The description of which is hardly likely to do it justice, so you can just take my word for it; and
  


• Also interesting was my discovery that apparently salade niçoise isn't supposed to have boiled potatoes in it. Weird, because I have never before seen it without them. Also, apparently it has celery in it.

* This "blazers with jeans" look was endearingly reminiscent of my former boss who, on many occasions when he has to dress up, favours the nautical blazer look. You'd fit right in in Monaco, Bob!

Veni, Vidi, Vici

In spite of what I am fairly sure was determination never to go and watch Reto curl again (never to watch Reto play curling? Never to watch Reto take part in a curling match? Never to watch Reto play some moronic sport involving gravel and ice and brooms? What is the correct terminology here?), I inadvertently went last weekend. And lived to tell the tale.

It's not a very interesting tale, and I suppose that last sentence is actually inaccurate because I have not told the tale and I have no intention of telling the tale (I can't imagine who would want to hear it), but I feel quite smug that I went, I saw, I conquered (conquered my fear of going there again, that is). I won't mention the fact that I was several hours late owing to a poorly (or perhaps not so poorly...) planned visit to the Lindt factory shop, nor that I was well armed with several books and the most expensive newspaper I have ever bought ($7!), nor that I once again didn't watch most of what went on, because that sort of information is frankly irrelevant, and might take some of the sheen off my remarkable feat of endurance.

Time For A Cup Of Tea And A Nice Lie Down

Last Monday morning, Reto and I became some sort of old age pensioners. We got out of bed ridiculously early, made a thermos of tea, then went and fell asleep on a train. Well, something like that, anyway.

We got up at 1.30am. We did make a thermos of tea (although we had been planning on a thermos of glühwein, but as it turns out "buy the cheapest wine you can find" is not a wise first step. Being the seasoned expert that I now am, I would advise paying more than $1.95 a litre). We got onto a train, and I did my best to fall asleep, but sadly failed.

We went to Basel for the beginning of Fasnacht. Inconveniently, the beginning of Fasnacht is at 4am, and so there we were, huddled together with thousands of other people in the centre of Basel, yawning, eating bratwurst and hoping not to be rained on. At precisely 4am all the lights went off and everyone went "oooh!" and then it all began.

I didn't really know what to expect. Reto had explained it all to me a bit, but somehow I never really listened properly, and I had tried to read about it on the internet but that never really sank in either. I knew that what we were going for was a parade of people playing piccolos and drums and dressed up in wacky costumes, and someone had told me that it was really loud, but that was about it.

Anyway, at the click of 4am ("click" being the sound of the lights being turned off, I imagine) we were suddenly surrounded by the sound of piccolos and drums, and all these people who were standing opposite me suddenly flung themselves to the side. Not some strange sort of audience participation, as it turned out, but the paraders making space for their parade. That was kind of unexpected, because there were clear paths left everywhere that I assumed the paraders would follow, and this being Switzerland, I imagined that no one was standing where they shouldn't be. Apparently some people were, though, but not to worry, because they were flung efficiently aside by a bunch of people dressed in wacky masks and costumes, with lights on their heads and carrying paper lanterns of all shapes and sizes.

The lanterns were not really lanterns, I suppose, but big illuminated things that were decorated by each group (for the paraders travel in packs) and apparently made fun of local politics and the like. It seems, for example, that it was proposed that a "polarium" be built in Basel and that it be packed full of penguins. Apparently this was a popular plan, but it was abandoned for financial reasons, and so pictures of sad penguins abounded.

In order to actually understand what it was all about I'm sure that you'd have to be a local, or at least a person with a far better grasp of their bizarro spelling than I am, but even with my total absence of knowledge it was still pretty entertaining, and spectacular to see in the 4am darkness.

Anyway. Each group of paraders played their own tune with their piccolos and drums, and had their own themed lanterns and paraded around in an orderly (ish) fashion. After a while it got kind of cold, so Reto and I went into a cafe for a bowl of soup and some warm air. As it turns out, groups of paraders apparently decide that they want to have breaks whenever they want to too, and so stepping indoors was kind of like stepping into a hell populated by freakish dismembered heads (and drums).

By the time we had had our soup and gone back outside the whole tone of the thing had kind of changed. It was all a lot more disorganised. The parade had spread out, it seemed, and groups of paraders were no longer following other groups. One minute you (as a bystander) would be standing in the street watching paraders parade by, and the next minute you would be either mown down or flung aside by a group of paraders who decided that they liked the look of your piece of road and weren't going to let you stand in their way. It was impossible to move, really because you never knew when some troop of ghouls and crazies would leap out at you with their piccolos blaring (all of which made rendezvousing with my recently-Australianised friend Ingrid impossible, which was a pity for various reasons, not the least of which was that I was going to get her to sign my postal vote form for me).

Anyway, that's basically Fasnacht for you. Or at least the first bit, for this goes on for three days in various forms. It's loud and cold and a surprising combination of heavily organised (you have to be one of them to be in it, and you stick with your group's rules about costumes and subjects and tunes and so on) and heavily disorganised (you stop when you want to, you go where you want to, you wake up the neighbours at unreasonable hours, which I gather is as un-Swiss as throwing rubbish (or confetti) in the streets, which is also done with abandon during Fasnacht). I had an excellent time, though, and then, tragically (to get back to the old-age-pensioner/thermos-carrying theme) I also really enjoyed going home again and having a nice warm bath and a nap. Sigh.

Two Hours Of My Life I Will Never Get Back

Being the dedicated girlfriend that I have apparently become, I went to watch Reto compete in a curling match last night. I don't know what I was thinking.

Both playing and watching, I hate almost all forms of sport, and to the best of my knowledge I always have. I used to like to try to make myself feel more open-minded by trying to convince myself that I only hated team sports or ball sports or sports that had to be played on grass. Then I thought that perhaps I might not hate sports that are vaguely ludicrous and that can be played by anyone regardless of physical incapacity or drunkenness (and admittedly there are a few of these that I have some time for. Darts, for example, although it starts to wear thin unless you are in a pub with a beer in your hand, threatening the safety of people who sit too close to the board. Luge always seemed kind of nice too, involving, as it does, people doing a very, very small amount of running and then having a good lie-down).

Curling always seemed like it might be on my "tentatively approved" list as well, what with all the standing around punctuated by entertainingly frenzied bouts of sweeping, and the looks of grim determination usually only seen on the faces of ladies at the local bowling club. I now realise, however, that I was wrong.

Curling is the single most uninteresting sport on the planet*. I'd bore you with the details except I think I was too comatose from lack of anything much happening to remember any. Even if you the game holds some amount of novelty (because you have never actually seen it played before. And I am still willing to admit that the sweeping aspect is vaguely comical), even if you are going to support your beloved boyfriend, even if you have coffee and a book to help you through, it's still advisable to stay at home and watch McLeod's Daughters in italian and tear your own fingernails out than try to sit through a match.

I love you, Reto, but apparently not that much.




* Actually, this might just be hyperbole on my part. I'm sure it's no more uninteresting than any other sport (with the possible exception of luge or darts)

A Very Cheesy Valentine's Day

This being the year of the Grand Romantic Gesture, I decided that abandoning a lifetime of apathy and embracing a Grand Romantic Valentine's Day was in order, and I bullied my boyfriend into agreeing with me. In the spirit of schmaltz and Switzerland, we decided to eat melted cheese in the freezing cold of our balcony.

There's nothing much you need to know about our sappy fondueathon other than that Reto was not very helpful (he stirred the fondue at one point, but only so I could take a photo and make it look like he was contributing. He was helpful with moving furniture and plates etc, though), that it was ridiculously heavily Swiss-themed:

(apart from the melted cheese theme, note also the flag cup, which apparently was a present, the "Swiss fondue" pot, which was the cheapest in the shop, and the generous use of winter woolies), and that it was fantastic.

Aww.