First Day

Today is Oct. 10th and my 2nd day chillin in Basel, Switzerland. I came over to Europe a couple of weeks ago with my new wonderful hubby Rob (or Robs as I like to call him) and we spent the past couple of weeks on a mediterrean cruise for our honeymoon. we started with 3 days in Roma, then the beautiful cruise and ended in Nice, France. C'est manific! (probably not spelled correctly)

So we came back on Sunday night (the flight from Nice was 45 minutes - yeah!!!) and yesterday was my first day getting acclimated while Rob went to work. The morning was great - clear blue skies and lots of sunshine -- which can be very rare in Basel! i started the day by trying to find a cool radio station to listen to like I do back home in Bmore in the mornings. I found a station that plays a diverse range of music (much like wtmd in Bmore), and also much like tmd in bmore, most of the songs were in english! yeah!!!! turns out they even have a program called "the english show" that airs on tuesday nights and has info on things - going on in Basel - all in English - wahoooo!!! i am going to see if I can get involved somehow.

the rest of my day was good! i spent a lot of time going through emails and then journeyed out around 2:30 (or 14:30 here!) for my first swiss grocery store visit on my own. I forgot to bring my own bag to the store but luckily my wonderful hub called me just after I got in to remind me how to say "tasche" (prounounced "tasha") so i could ask for one at checkout. he's so great!! so i roamed around the store and I think I was okay i think! Everything is written in German, French and Italian (the 3 languages spoken in Schweiz) so the old French from high school/college helped me out a little bit with some things. i did order a pork loin or "schweinefleisch filet" from the butcher. kind of a cop out since I didn't have to do any metric conversion but hey- it was my first day!! my only other hiccup was when i went to pay for my salad lunch and the man behind the counter was asking me something and I had no idea what it was! luckily he did a hand motion for a drink so i could figure it out. note to self - the german word for drink is "gertrank."

So i came home with my groceries - a short walk in the beautiful sunshine - and everything was fine. i had some of my little salat (had eggs, olives, smoked salmon and some kind of pea/carrot/mayo mixture) and played on the computer a bit more. For dinner, i cooked (yikes - scary when the hub is such a good cook) but i made the pork loin with olive oil, fresh rosemary from Rob's herb garden and some basic s&p (thanks Jenny & Rusty for the italian cookbook for the shower gift!). I also made a kind of sauce with the mushrooms and chicken broth I had gotten in leiu of the fig sauce in the cook book - one thing at a time you know??!! Plus some salad and some past and some fresh kase (cheese) and brot (bread - potato bread with nuts (nusse)) that I had gotten. All in all, pretty good and I don't think I poisoned the hub so it is all good!!!

our evening concluded with some Mets highlights - on to the next round of the playoffs!!! and some Grey's Anatomy reruns. And check this out - Robs figured out how to change the language on the tv from German to English (or French). it doesn't work for all shows (booo Sex in the City) but it did work for Gray's. it's last season's but no compliants here.

So here I am on day two, having thoroughly survived day one and excited for the adventures ahead. I am going to go for a walk today to drop off the recylcling (you have to bring it to a designated location) and run some other errands.

Hope you enjoyed my chat from day one. Ciao for now!
msv