Foggy, almost like San Francisco, but not so low. And cold. About as cold as the East Bay gets in winter. Except here it's only cold outside. Heeeeey. Did laundry today, and put it out on the balcony hoping the sun would come out. Heh. Nope.
Hankerchiefs: a very important part of my existence in this cold, cold world.
Getting to know more of Basel, I've been walking to and from school because it seems too cold to ride my bike (weak!) and have found some nice things on my way. Today I noticed this public flowerbed that I've passed a number of times and never seen, which astounds me, because it is full of some pretty epic chard and kale plants.
I took this picture of my glove on one of the chard leaves for scale.
Basel is funny. It always kind of weirds me out how small it is. For instance: the other day I was in a shoe store buying these funny slippers for myself (10chf).
I dawdled on my way up to the counter and a girl slipped in front of me to exchange a pair of shoes. Zing. Later that day, while on the bus, I saw the same girl (across town) riding her bike down the street. Then, in the train station on my way to Zurich, I saw her again. THEN, two nights ago, I was walking home from having dinner with some friends, they live in another part of town from me, and Who Was Going The Other Way? Yes. Same girl. Weird. I wonder if she notices me. There are other people I've seen twice, but three+ times? Crazy.
I've been a little stuck in a cooking rut lately. Rice. Vegetables. Rice. Salad. Rice. What else do I know how to make? Besides cereal? Yeah. Well, anyway, I got up the gumption to make a pumpkin curry for a friend who came over for lunch, and decided to make the curry paste from scratch. Amazing! So good, so easy. Onion, garlic, some kind of hot pepper (we don't have serrano or jalapeno peppers here), a bunch of cilantro, a little bit of water. Grind up with food processor. Put in a pot with coconut milk. Add vegetables. Cook until done. Yes.
Since I've been walking instead of taking the tram, I rewarded myself with this plant. Cost the same amount as tram fare. Hello Viola.
I also finally have a key to the bass locker at school, and now can keep one of the whales there as needed. Plus, it means I can practice at school. It feels like I get a lot more done at school than at home. Ah, look. I appear to be doing work. I wonder how long I can keep it up? What a skeptic!
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.
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.
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
Fresh spinach-ricotta ravioli; giant mystery chard-like green cooked in olive oil, garlic, red wine and rosemary salt, topped with toasted slivered almonds; Duvel. Balcony, 7 PM.
Recently moved the plants into a sunnier locale, have been rewarded by a comeback from the chard and a tomato hatching from the lettuce pot. Also some very enthusiastic peas.
As a respite from the high-minded (read:dry) Memoirs of Hadiran I've been reading James Fenimore Cooper - The Last of the Mohicans. It was mentioned in another book I read recently, and I thought I'd try it. I'm not entirely sure I want to finish; it's filled with the bigotry of its time, and the rancor towards the non-whites in the book proves difficult to swallow. Also, it goes from one melodramatic scene of handsome men ("he was a perfect specimen") and mind-blowingly beautiful women of strong character in situations of high danger and near death that it makes me a little tired. It's no wonder the movie did so well; the book is perfect for a screen adaptation. I'm even more tempted to stop when I look at my magnificent and largely-unread library; I reorganized my room, and stacked all my books (28 now, including the JFC, thanks to two recent and much-appreciated care packages) where I can easily get to them. Seeing all those delectable titles is enough to distract me from practicing. Not such a bad thing, as I've recently overdone it; the last bit of work I had caused me fairly acute pain in my right arm, and I've been laying off a bit to avoid injury. And my "busy month" has not even begun. Thanks to the folks a new (old) lighter bow is on its way. What do musicians do who don't have luthier/archetier parents? It must really suck.
Alternate titles considered for this post:
Ack, this is so good
Why go out when you can stay in
Cooking with red wine: ruining my wardrobe, one shirt at a time
