a little shopping in Basel

or I should say, a little shopping near Basel. I met a friend in Basel and we took a bus to the end of the city, got off and walked into Germany. Things are a bit expensive in Switzerland, so we went to an outlet in Germany. It was great, the carhartt outlet was my favorite, I have wanted european carhartt clothing for the last 5 years, finally got some. Then we went back to Basel and cruised around the town for a while. It's beautiful, i love the cities here!

This part of town was great, reminded me of a cartoon, they have markets on this square everyday.

The hustle and bustle of Basel

My friend and guide Pina, she was sick today

just a closeup of a fountain in the middle of the street,

(the other pictures of the fountain didn't turn out so well)

and another post

just a few more pictures of my alp adventure.

Just up the hill there is a break in the trees and a great view of town

Me and my guide Marcoooo

And to finish it off, some delicious fondue!

What a great time. There you have it folks.

the insides

here is your chance to see what a typical hut in the alps looks like on the inside.

When you walk in, you've got the barn for the cows, and just above is a loft. That used to be the best place to sleep when the cows were there, because it was the warmest. But the hut has been remodeled so the inside is warmer.

The woodburning stove, you can see we are melting snow so there we had warm water, there is a spot for water in the stove. There is no running water, but a spring fed well up the hill. There is a bit of electricity from solar panels, very cool.

View of the kitchen

if you follow the pipe from the previous picture, this is where it goes, up this chimney, keeps a cold draft though.

The other room, bedroom/dining room, a cute little loft up the ladder, and that tiny woodburning stove to keep the room warm.

I totally forgot to get a picture of the bathroom, it was just a camp toilet in the far corner of the barn, pretty great.

Mountain Hut

This weekend I was able to go to my friend Marco's mountian hut up in the alps. It was great! I think it would be so easy to just disappear, and live the rest of your life in a hut in the swiss alps. If nobody hears from me ever again, don't worry I'll be just fine. I took so many pictures, and since I've been slacking on my posts, I'll save some for the next post. These pictures are just the journey to the hut.

So to start, we took the gondola to the top of First station and then hiked up a trail, to then sled down to the hut.

Marco had a velo gimel, another traditional swiss sled thingy

Don't worry, I got a turn on it, loooved it!

After a long and fun descent, we finally made it to the hut.

I loved that the rain gutters are made of wood.

The view was alright too.

I'll post more photos tomorrow. Good night.

Valentines cookies

We made some cookies for valentines day. Here are some pictures of our journey.

Master chefs Hayden and Bode

Bode

Hayden a little upset he couldn't eat his uncooked cookies

A little help from Mommy

Myles just checkin out the finished product

sunrise, sunset.

Apologies again for the lack of posts. I wish I had my camera on two occasions today, but I'm just not grabbing it on a daily basis. But I did manage to snag a few pictures last week, both of them I took on my way out of my room. I walk out and look up, run back into my room, grab the camera, take some pictures, put the camera back, and carry on with my day. More scenery, but to me it's more than that.

This was the sunrise

 Then the sunset

the colors got much better later, but I loved the cloud hovering on the top of the eiger.



Firewood

I've learned in the past month I've been here that swiss people are very tidy, they also take pride in what they have. So an old unused barn will still be taken care of, flowers will be planted and it will be kept clean. It's amazing to me how lovely everything looks all the time. I took a picture of a woodpile I walked by as an example of how swiss people do things. As easy as stacking wood might be, why not take the time to make it nice?

kinda cute right?

just lovely.

Kolner Dom

So there was a challenge for you guys a few posts ago about looking up old photos of the Cologne Cathedral during WWII. I'm doubting anyone did, so I'm posting a few pictures I found online.

Punk rock

Punk rock is alive and well in Germany! I managed to squeeze in a punk rock show on my little outing over the weekend. It is hard core out there! People are nuts, I've never seen such crazy hairstyles, piercings or metal spikes, in my life. Just a few photos, for you. I felt like I needed to give it a retro black and white look. Although sadly I didn't get pictures of the crazy punk rock dudes with the mohawks and facial tattoos.

I like this picture

In case you were wondering, Adrian Brody sings in a punl rock band in Germany.

I think I counted 12 piercings on this lady, I should post her picture in color, half her hair is flourescent pink.

Little crazy dancing