Basel post, from Oakland.

I finally dumped photos from my digital camera onto my computer today, and found some delightful things from my last night in Basel. 

This is my Chard.  I cut it, finally, and made it into this:

and it was so delicious.

After dinner, Maria and I went down to the Rhine to drink prosecco and eat these little strawberry tarts she had brought us for dessert.  It wasn't as warm as it had been, by which I mean I wasn't tempted to go swimming, but we were out in shirt sleeves until 11.  This is particularly sweet-sounding now that I'm in the Bay Area and freezing by 6 PM.

Dreirosenbrucke in the background. This is in the NW corner of the city, close to Germany/France.

 

July 4: Independence / Good Riddance Day, depending on whom you ask

Alternately, you could call it, Let's ride our bikes to the old river and swim around a bit, have a picnic, swim around a bit more, and enjoy the summer time.  Yes!

You ride into Germany, and pretty much follow the river north/northwest.  The destination, up close.  We left early, around 8:45, and had the roads mostly to ourselves.

Maria and Sam up ahead of me.  I was unsafely trying to take photos while riding my bike.  It turned out OK, however.  Nothing to worry about.

We found a nice rock to hang out on (look at this gorgeous day! and not so hot, because of our impressively electrical thunderstorm last night).

picnic, and foot.

Speaking of feet, I'm so accident-prone right now!  I smashed my big toe on a rock while swimming along.  It bled, I took a picture, but I know you don't want to see that.  You're welcome.

Instead, here is my shadow.  It wasn't until the bike ride home that I remembered the date; I had a jolly little discussion with Sam, the British half of the couple I went with, about Independence Day, where he decided that he could celebrate "We Didn't Want You Anyway" Day, otherwise known as Good Riddance Day.  The other half of the couple is Maria, who is from Transylvania.  Hungarian is a crazy language, I'll tell you.  I learned one word.  I have no idea how to spell it, but it sounds like this: "boo-djee."  It means "underpants."  How did this possibly come up?  Well.  There are many amusing things about British English and American English which do not cross over, as I'm sure many of you know.  In this instance, we were noting how American "pants" are British "trousers" and British "pants" are American "underwear" -- and now you see how this boo-djee fits in to the conversation.  Hilarity ensued.  

The only thing missing from this 4th of July is corn.  Fresh, sweet, delicious corn.  There's a bbq being hosted by someone from Vermont later in the day, so I'll probably go see if he was able to scare up any.  I bet he wasn't.  Sam told me that in Europe, corn is for feeding pigs.  Sigh.  Just think, if there was good corn, there could be good corn tortillas, and tortilla chips, and... oh.  Heh heh.  Did I already mentioned that I'm excited about eating Mexican food again?  Just another three days!!!