alternative transportation

Yesterday I thought I'd try a different method for getting across the Rhein; it was too hot to ride my bike without sweating all over my nice shirt, and I'm sick of the trams, which are stifling this time of year anyway.  Good thing Basel has the ferries, called "anachronistic" by some and "entirely charming" by others (source citation? heh heh heh).  A cable stretches across the river, and by putting the boat at an angle into the current, the ferry is pushed only by the force of the water from bank to bank.  Hydro-power!  The boat's got a tiller, but no engine.  Somehow I managed not to get a picture of it from far away.  Here are one or two representative examples.

 On a hot day like yesterday, you may find yourself tromping past ice cream vendors and mostly-nudes on your way down to the tiny dock. 

how nice.

The ferry pulls up, you climb on, and a man with no pants on swings the boom attached to the cable to the other side of the boat (shore side); it's not even necessary to push off.  As you're gently pushed across, little heads bob along beside you, swimmers with their bright "säckli" (little sack!) basically keeping heads-up in the fast current, on their way towards Germany/France.

(you know you can click on these to make them bigger, right?)

Anyway.  Many snobby Swiss people say that they prefer to swim in pure glacier ("glah-see-air") water than in the dirty Rhein.  Yup, pretty dirty:

In fact, it is almost ridiculously turquoise and shimmery at the moment.  I'm going to wait one more day for my claw-wound to heal a little more, 

but I should be back in by tomorrow.  It's supposed to be 90 this weekend.  Wow.  Somebody needs a hat.

(ps. thanks to Ryan for the glah-see-air reminder.  I don't even notice these things anymore.)

summer time!

Well, it's definitely summer. And not just because it's damn hot outside. The Rhein has chilled out (and warmed up) enough to allow for some casual swimming, and day by day the numbers of floaters-with-the-current increase.  Also, of course, the World Cup figures heavily in everyone's plans for each day (including mine).  My friend in Denmark even had the time of his orchestra concert changed to accommodate a soccer match. People are having picnics, in parks and by the river. Beer is consumed, with little fuss or notice. My personal level of inactivity has reached a nearly startling peak; I do still go to Druckwerk daily, but most other things have gone by the wayside. I finished a 400-page book in two days, for instance. And today, finally, I swam in the river, and was inhibited only by the multitudinous cuts and scrapes I have from a stupid bike injury received yesterday on my friend's sorry excuse for a bike. I couldn't get it going on a hill and just fell over, alas.

Then today, maybe 30 minutes ago, on my way home from watching Brazil vs Chile, I had another stupid experience (this time with my own bike) and got this little doozy:

Oh well.  Good thing I'm such a tough cookie.

The Rhein swimming was great.  I'll go again as soon as my little bear-attack scabs up.  I haven't been working on any new projects at the print shop, but we've been cleaning up after a bit of excitement, in the form of a new press, delivered last week through the window.  The window came out of its frame,

leaving a big hole in the wall for the press to come in through.  (Remember that we're on the third floor.)

As Marcel and I watched through the hole, the press arrived on a truck,

then was transferred onto a hydraulic lift,

and slowly brought up to the window.

I thought I'd be able to catch the press on video, slowly gliding into the shop.  Ha.  It took about two hours of slowly moving it a few inches in, strategically placing blocks of wood underneath it, moving it in a few more inches, moving the blocks, etc.  At first everyone couldn't get enough of the show.  Here are Marcel and Florian:

And the neighbors across the way:

But we eventually realized it was going to take a long time, and let the workers continue with their incremental bits of progress and their man-grunting, unwatched.

I'm happy to report that the new press is a Vandercook (American!) with a giant paper size.  From the 1950 catalog:

Vandercook 42-28 Power Test Press 
Bed: 42″ × 50″
Maximum sheet: 41¾” × 30″
Maximum form: 41″ × 28″
Floor space: 4’10″ × 9′
Weight: 5650 lb
Price (1950): $7740
“The largest test press in the Vandercook line for proving one and two-color plates and forms.” The automatic frisket is optional.

It's nice having something from the home-country in the shop.  It probably won't be hooked up to electricity before I leave, but that gives me all summer to think up some projects printed on giant sheets of paper.

(More photos and some video of the press in the air coming soon to my flickr page.)

Alternate titles for today's post:

Bike Injuries

Fußball? Fußball!

How early is it OK to have a beer?

Rheinschwimmen!

Three Tons of Cast Steel In The Air

"pick-nick"

Tonight I went to a picnic. Why didn't I bring my camera? It was dumb. I didn't know how nice it would be. You go behind the Bahnhof (train station) and through the neighborhood called Gundeli to Margarethenpark. There's a open green space surrounded by trees, and a playground and fountain on your right, and a path leading uphill. You go up, and keep going up, to the left, and all of a sudden you find yourself in the middle of fields of grass, and cultivated strawberries, and you're above the town and isolated from it by trees, and something else, like quiet.

In the group the following countries were represented: France, Brazil, Turkey, Spain, Germany, Colombia, and the US, of course. A generous mix of French, German, Spanish and English was spoken, and many delicious French cheeses were eaten. I even tried some hard salami made out of duck. I know. Since it is light so late, we didn't even meet until 8; we stayed in the field until 10:30, and it was only just getting too dark and cold to be out in the grass. Then another two hours were spent at the hostess' house, where some neighbor Argentinians joined the group. The South American contingent sang us songs and played skilled guitar while the rest of us drank red wine in admiration for their talents. What an international city I live in.

In other news, the river seems to have quieted down, and the weather has certainly heated up, so there may be some river-swimming in my future. We'll see.

To avoid a photo-less post I'm including this poppy from the botanical garden. A present for you.

technical difficulty

I've noticed that clicking on the movie opens up a large version of the picture of Maggie on the tram. So here is the video by itself, in all of its tropical, poopy glory.

such a nice time.

Dear Maggie,

Please come visit me all the time!

love,

Megan

head-lick

botanical garden,

complete with pooping bird

music instrument museum

tram ride

not pictured: 6 cups of brown rice we made, then slowly ate; weird cereal-filled chocolate balls we couldn't quite convince ourselves to enjoy; the many beers drunk while watching the World Cup; pretzels consumed under the same circumstances; the rain, which refused to let up the entire weekend; the waterlogged farmer's market; look of joy on my face as Maggie cooked yet another meal; the fake-grass-covered benches outside of Art Basel on which I waited to meet Maggie after we had each spent two hours looking around the giant expanse of art works; look of enthusiasm on Maggie's face after I managed to return her defective coffee maker to the department store, then exchange it for another, entirely in German (plus hand gestures); the absurdly swollen river, thanks to our absurd amount of rain; speed with which I ran after realizing (thanks to a call from Maggie's mom, her first ever international call!) that I had the date of her arrival wrong; delicious lentil soup we ate at my new favorite neighborhood cafe, ZaZaa; and some other things, too numerous to list. It was pretty nice.

found in idleness

some Robert Johnson

and

some early Mississippi John Hurt

this, and that

Not much going on here at the moment.  I have very little playing to do; my teacher is out of the country, teaching at Tafelmusik (where I met him), and I don't have any work, though I do have one concert this month, the Master's recital of one Marie Schneider, blockflote player of Alsace (France).  

I can't print, at the moment, because the building has been taken over by the giant art fair; yesterday I went to the opening of the show (and skipped the entry fee by sneaking in the back way, ha) and saw a couple decent things, along with a lot of really uninteresting paintings.  There were two publishing collectives from Germany, one from Berlin called AKV, and one from Leipzig, called Spector Books; I ended up talking for a while to the Spector guy, and in the end traded one of my we are eating breakfasts for a book set of theirs called Liner Notes.  The "set" includes the English translation of the text, and is pretty interesting: it's a record of four days of conversations about books, making books, organizing books, designing books.  One of the Spector people I talked to even suggested I come up to Leipzig and do some printing, or perhaps teach a workshop, as they're pretty interested in letterpress up there (as much as they can be; no one is as enthusiastic about the old technologies here as they are in the States).

So.  This makes it sounds like I've been doing things.  Maybe, although I also am getting into the habit of sleeping late, then taking a nap during the day, then... looking at the internet... and... uh...

Well.  In other news, alas:

I'll have to buy a new bass wheel when I go home this summer.  I can't complain too much, I did buy this when I was at USC (1998).  I've definitely gotten my money's worth.

And, I did have the chance to print one thing before Art Basel started:

look at these fatties!

When do I get to eat them?!?

In other good news, I got a bed.  It's the first mattress I've called my own since the mid-nineties; since then, it's been an unending parade of futons.  I kind of feel like I'm sleeping in someone's guest bedroom.  I'm confident, however, that I'll adjust. 

Alpine Adventure

On Tuesday, with the calls of mountain marmots (Murmeltier!) ringing in the air, Eva and I had a vigorous hike through the Alps, by the famous "top of Europe" -- the Jungfrau, Mönch, and Eiger peaks were visible above us nearly the entire time, and below us, little towns, ski chalets, and farms. 

The mountain region we went to is in the Berner Oberland (giving the railway, the Berner Oberland Bahn, the initials BOB); you can take the regular train to Interlaken and go from there on an assortment of funiculars, buses, and cable cars up to various high places, from which you can do quite a lot of up-and-down between transportation points.  (On the way up you pass many a dairy farm, where you can hear the clanging of cowbells.  O Switzerland.)  After some low-key sightseeing, we took a hiking path (Wanderweg) that runs roughly from Kleine Scheidegg to Männlichen (map), with an exceptional stretch of "up" right at the end.  The map I link to shows how high we were, in feet as well as meters; I thought we were high at Kleine Scheidegg, at 6762 feet, 

(Eiger and Mönch here)

but it was quite a push to get us up and into Männlichen (because there had been quite a bit of down) which sits at 7317 feet.  Crap, that's high.  

(Skilift Tschuggen, about 45 minutes down from Männlichen)

Fortunately, summer seems to have finally arrived, because we could hike with bare arms most of the time.  As we got close to Männlichen and took a food break (or, more accurately, collapsed in a heap by the side of the trail to stuff bread and cheese into our hungry, tired mouths) the wind picked up and it got a bit cold.  But all in all, it was just what I was hoping for: incredibly high mountains, some sweat and hard work, and then something unexpected at the end.  Once you reach the top, you get to ride in these little gondola cars that dangle from a cable, all the way down to the town of Grindelwald, which turns out to be the longest ride of its type in the world.  6 km, just about.  

We shared our gondola with this very nice old couple from the Canton of Bern (so, not the city, but the state, so to speak); the husband spoke decent English, and I could understand much of their slow, charming Swiss-German as they spoke with Eva.  They told us about the line, and its length, and a number of other things I couldn't quite follow; then the husband explained that Switzerland has a constitution modeled somewhat after that of the States', with a Congress and a House of Representatives, and elected officials coming from each of the Cantons in the same system as ours.  Also, we saw a few sleek, fat marmots peering out from their large holes in the ground and chirping their extraordinarily loud call.  I think they must just like to hear the echo (I enjoyed it too).

I realize I've left out the more "touristic" part of our day: Trümmelbachfälle - you can see it on the right hand side of the map.  We took a bus up from Lauterbrunnen, then shuffled in line with some Americans, British, and plenty of Japanese tourists through the entry gate, past the white-cold glacier stream, and up to an elevator that would take us to the middle of the mountain, where we could see the chutes of the falls.  Icy blue water rushing through tunnels in the mountain.  Noisy, even thunderous.  With mist everywhere.  The chutes have been nicely framed by walkways, steps, and little viewing chambers carved into the mountain.

The rock is worn smooth.  I was mildly embarrassed that it reminded me of the water park of my youth, Schlitterbahn (you Texas people know the wonders of that place), but about 500x scarier, more beautiful, more powerful. And outside the mountain, exactly what you might hope for in Alpine scenery; fields of wildflowers, singing birds, all surrounded by dramatic cliffs, dotted by waterfalls made tiny by distance, though their drops are epic in height.

 Hey, it's pretty nice here.  You should come visit.

oh dear peas of my heart

Please grow quickly, friends. I want to eat you.

the supplies are dwindling

I always wondered how long it takes to go through a tube of toothpaste.  About three months.  Same with conditioner, and lip balm, and most of the other things I brought from the States and now have to replace with weird Swiss products.  Mostly I make good choices, but there've definitely been some failures, too.

dejected

ready to take over

There have been some inquiries about the state of the plants.  Peas have flowers, chard needs to be repotted, lettuce is delicious.  Some of it smells like the tomato plant growing in the container (also waiting to be repotted) and I like those leaves the best.

The fried areas happened while I was gone, do you think it's sunburn, from water?

And to close, two evening sun-on-wall shots, taken during the only 30 minutes of clear skies we got today.  (Late spring is turning out to be depressingly cold and wet.  Unusually so, I hear.)  My room really displays a dramatic difference in the position of the sun throughout the year.  When I moved here, we'd get sun on the north wall around 6 PM; now it's sun on the south wall at 8.  Fascinating.