Dear California.

My last view of the California coast is hazy and golden. The plane swings out over the ocean on its turn toward the east. Los Angeles, Malibu. The Channel Islands in the distance. Sun in my face, so I close my eyes, but don't turn my head away. The coast is beneath me, it is rapidly receding behind me.

A friend here in Basel asked me if I was going to be like James Joyce and write about, long for, mythologize my home while living in self-induced exile in another country my whole life. I think I shrugged noncommittally. (Wait for the blog entries to use more and more of my own special language.) Life in California remains unfinished for me. More specifically, my life in California, the one that I left, still feels the same as it did when I left, even though all kinds of things have changed. Every trip back starts with several days of disorientation. It makes it difficult to be clear about my nostalgia. Does seeing video of LA traffic make me homesick because I miss sitting in traffic? Seems more likely that sitting in traffic in LA was part of who I was as a person. Driving up to Santa Barbara, right after I got off the plane from Europe, I really felt like myself. So we can establish that I spent a lot of time in a car. But then, on my way up to the Bay Area, I was sick of driving by the time I got to King City (I know, only halfway there), which proves that I have changed, after all. The "I" is not a static thing. Or, at least, not entirely.

How was the trip, anyway? Good, short, intense. Half the time the weather was incredible, warm and sunny, but I'd still say this trip was Cold. Why is it always cold inside? You think people would have done something about it by now. First there was the Codex Bookfair: a serious 4 days of sitting at a table explaining my Swiss friends' books, and my own, to students, collectors, and other artists. Also some looking around at other people's books, though not much; it was busy. I bought one book (from the table across the aisle from mine) and traded for two others. A former student from the Academy came and helped me out for two days, and damned if she didn't sell as many books as I did. I had a feeling the twinkle in her cute Brazilian eye would move the unsuspecting fair attendees to reach for their wallets. Then there was the talk I gave, about the Swiss books; the class I taught at the Center for the Book; and then the three days of hanging out before I got on the early BART train to the airport and flew back down to LA. My very nice friend skipped going to work for the morning so she could drive me to get Japanese food before putting me on my plane to Basel.

Basel, now, is cold, in the 30s, raining. I've spent a few days getting organized in my new flat, and I really like it (not least because the heating works so well). It feels excellent to play the bass again, that is a large part of the "I" and it is a part I'm enjoying. I've only got a few more days here before I join an orchestra on a little tour, two weeks on the road, concerts in Hong Kong, Vienna, Dijon. I'm lucky to be able to do these things.

On my east-bound plane, into the darkening sky, I think of looking out over the City from the windy top of San Bruno Mountain, of drinking wine, of walking all over Berkeley. Eating, eating out all the time, Ethiopian food, vegan Mexican, non-vegan Mexican, Vietnamese, Chinese, sushi, sandwiches, soups, salads, beautiful California food. Looking around, drinking beer, doing things. There are so many things. My airplane window is dirty, or fogged up, or both. And behind me, my coast very nearly glows.

people are nice

some examples:

Ella (friend, horn player, Icelandic) and I arrived in Kilchberg to find pouring rain and the wrong bus.  She thought she might ask the bus driver how close he would stop to the church, and it turned out the drivers were just about to have a shift change, and the one who was just going off-duty actually DROVE US IN HIS CAR to where we were going.

Earlier, on the train, I realized that I had left the endpin for my bass at home (it's a long story why it wasn't with my bass, involving having a lesson on a different bass and leaving mine at the church, etc etc) and was not planning on returning home for two nights.  This would mean six rehearsals/concerts with no endpin.  What to do?!?  Ella made a few calls, got the number of this Latvian guy (Raitas is his name) who lives not too far from me, but whom I had never spoken to, and who would be arriving only for the second rehearsal since he was one of the vocal soloists.  Before he left, he went over to Efringerstrasse, my roommate let him in, and he picked up the endpin for me.  So Great.

(Also, she gave me some Icelandic money, in exchange for one of the new pennies, which she quickly proclaimed to be "just shit.")

And, she told me all about this really stunning version of "If you're going to San Francisco" and even sang it for me, truly enlivening my train ride home.  And now I will share the video with you.  Because I'm nice, too.




Bass wheel saga... I should have just replaced the wheel by now.  But instead, I've tried to just fix the old one, spending nearly the same amount of money and roughly 7x as much time as I would have otherwise.  There have been some helpful people along the way.  I should mention them.  Marcel, of course, at Druckwerk, has done a lot of drilling, fixing, finding parts, tightening, re-tightening, finding new parts, etc.  Also some guy at this random machine shop I went to near Voltaplatz (how's that for the name of a neighborhood?) drilled, fitted parts, and assembled, all out of the goodness of his heart.  (Unfortunately, his fix didn't work, and as I was wheeling my bass through the Zurich main station I heard some little "ping" noises behind me just before the wheel completely fell apart.  I went the next day to the Home Depot equivalent [OBI] and found some parts that worked well enough to keep me going until the next fix.  Why have I not just replaced the whole wheel?  My stubborn nature, I can only assume.)

Oh, my roommate, of course, who allows me to not give her my rent until I get paid.  Wow.  So nice.

Also nice are plants.  I finally replaced the ones that died over the summer with a couple for the indoors, an orchid and a succulent.  I was so busy admiring them this evening that I accidentally turned my roasting potatoes (thinly sliced) into incredibly delicious potato chips.  What a delightful mistake.

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.

 

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.

less-domestic

Went yesterday to see the Botanical Gardens here in Basel; they're funded by the University, along with some local pharmaceutical companies (Novartis, etc), so walking around is free.  There are several greenhouses; one with cacti and succulents, one Victorian-style building with all the wet species (giant lily pads, rice, etc), one for nurturing the new plants before they get properly placed in the other themed spaces, and then the tropical greenhouse, pictured above.  It is several stories high, at points, and includes a spiral staircase so you can look down from above at, excitingly, several species of tropical birds, chasing each other through the giant leaves and spongy-barked trees.  It's like the CA Academy of Sciences but without the steep admission and the noisy crowds.  I think this place will save me during the unending winter months.

The humidity was too high to get a proper, un-fogged picture, but here you can see some kind of bird that was maybe a yard from where I stood.

new growth in the potting greenhouse

the Victorian greenhouse, and the University library in the background

awfully nice, it was.