Sometimes everything just goes right. 

For months, we’d been planning for my parents to come over and spend Christmas with us in our place in Switzerland.  I booked their flights on Lufthansa, connecting in Frankfurt and then onto Basel.

About three weeks before they were supposed to fly, I got a phone call from Lufthansa telling me their initial flight had been cancelled and that they’d been reaccomodated on a flight via Munich.  What a saving grace that ended up being.  Flights across Europe were cancelled due to the heavy snowfalls, and Frankfurt airport ground to a standstill, but Munich was open and operating as per normal.  My parents managed to arrive in Basel about 15 minutes behind schedule, but otherwise without incident.

We brought them back to the house and a week of gluttony began!  On the 23^rd, the snow arrived and it continued snowing until Christmas day, about 8” in total and the first white Christmas in Basel for many, many years.  It was the perfect setting for a traditional Swiss Christmas dinner – roast goose, spaetzle, and red cabbage.

The next morning, the sun came out and it was a spectacular day for walking, so that’s what we did, before heading off for two days in Germany to visit old family friends.

And then it was time to send them home again, this time via Frankfurt.  While the airports in the north of Europe were all buried in snow, Frankfurt was open again as the snow had melted off.  They got back home right on schedule. 

I should have such luck every time I fly!

After being stuck in the house for a week, a combination of the stores being closed for the holidays and then miserable, rainy weather after they reopened, we finally emerged today to go downtown to walk around the city centre, do a little shopping, and see the decorations before they take them down later this week.

Basel Rathaus at Christmas

Matthew at Marktplatz

Aude at Marktplatz

The entrance to Marktplatz

Christmas lights

Street scene

Fountain with Christmas lights

Christmas lights at the Hotel Basel

Christmas tree at the Hotel Basel

A creative use of bottles to decorate the tree outside a bar

I’m long overdue for an update to the blog. Since my last post, I’ve been to Hyderabad once and Mumbai twice, plus a week in the mountains in Switzerland on our off-site.

We’ve also finally moved into our permanent apartment. The move itself was uneventful, aside from a few breakages. Apparently, the French definition of good packing includes putting books on top of china and glass. With my heavy travel schedule, it has taken a while to get unpacked, but we’re finally settled in. The wardrobes are built (a task I vow I’ll never repeat), the bookshelves are up, and my study is the only part of the apartment that remains a disaster zone.

Aude & Daisy in front of the fireplace

Our neighbours’ houses, covered in snow

Looking out onto the hills behind our house

We’re beginning to get ready for Christmas. The weather has turned much colder this week, and we’ve had our first snowfall of the season. We’ve got the fireplace working (just about – the engineer is on his way for another technical visit today to try to solve some problems with the smoke drawing out properly) and we’re ready for the winter.

 

Happy New Year! I hope everyone had a chance to relax over the holidays. Though I was forced to cancel part of my Christmas vacation to support urgent client requirements, we were able to sneak off for a four-day minibreak in Berlin, leaving Aude’s parents at our place in Paris to look after the cats. (Reports are that Daisy was somewhat horrible to look after, not friendly at all. Some things never change.)

Berlin Television Tower

Aude was in charge of the planning…

The bus depot was one of the highlights of the trip to Berlin. Had to take a photo to remember the moment!

A little gluhwein to warm up in the sub-freezing temperatures…

Inside the church

Francois & Gratiane

Lost again! We seemed to spend a lot of time looking at the map. Not much fun in the cold weather.

Holocaust memorial

The Berlin Wall

A line indicates where the Berlin Wall wall used to stand. It runs around the entire city.

Checkpoint Charlie

Checkpoint Charlie

Francois & Matthew enjoy a couple of well-earned beers after a day of sight-seeing.

A section of the Berlin Wall, covered in grafitti

Aude and Gratiane make their mark!!!

So off we went to Berlin to see the sights. We rented an apartment in the Northeast of the city which turned out to be a mixed blessing. The apartment itself was lovely, bigger than our apartment in Paris, but the 10-minute walk to the metro was a nightmare as the temperatures plunged to -10. Next time I go to Berlin, it will be in springtime.

We hit all the major sites – Checkpoint Charlie, the Brandenburg Gate, the Berlin Wall – and managed to squeeze in a few museums as well. We walked around a lot of the city, but the layout of Berlin is not conducive to walking – the scale of the streets and buildings means that everything is too far apart to walk between.

Highlights of our trip included a ride all the way around the S-Bahn on the first night (when our plan to go find a nice spot for a drink went wrong!), misunderstanding the bus driver when he ordered us all off the bus and ending up in the bus depot, freezing every time we went outside, and eating a lot of cabbage. I think I ate cabbage at least twice a day for the entire trip. You did not want the seat next to me on the plane home.