Birsigstrasse 120

We are now fully unpacked at our new home at Birsigstrasse 120, a three bedroom apartment that we are renting in the Paulus/ Bachletten Quartier of Basel-Stadt. We couldn’t be happier with the location. It is so nice to be living downtown within walking distance, or a short tram ride, to almost everything. Schutzenmatt Park and the Basel Zoo are only a block away, and we have a Migros convenient store right across the street that is open on Sundays (very rare!).

We lucked out with the building as well (for those who don’t know, we took over the lease from another Novartis family sight-unseen). It is not a modern concrete block, like so many of the buildings I had seen online. And while it isn’t old either (maybe turn of the century), some of the detail, like high ornamented ceilings, make it seem more historic and quaint. The building has been divided into eight units. The bottom two units are businesses and the six units above them are residential. Our apartment is on the first residential floor on the left side of the building, so we have one business below us and two tenants above us (and technically one next to us, but they (coincidentally?) moved out a week after we moved in).

The downsize from a house to an apartment, suprisingly, has not been an issue at all. There are nine rooms: dining room, family room, kitchen, master bedroom, master bathroom, kids bedroom, kids bathroom, office and playroom (plus a nice sized storage unit in the basement where a lot of our stuff has ended up!). And the rooms are all fairly big, with big windows to let in light. Being on one floor makes it feel a little smaller than what we were used to, but it is actually nice having everyone so close and being able to give the kids free reign without having to wonder what they are up to.

The harder adjustment has been the proximity of neighbors, combined with Switzerland’s Quiet Hours Rules: “It is not permitted to make any loud noise between 22:00pm and 07:00am, from 12:00pm to 14:00pm and all day Sunday and public holidays, including: not playing music, having a shower, turning on the dishwasher or washing machine or mowing the lawn”. So when Ethan came down with one of his high fever episodes the first week in the apartment and cried loudly for almost five days straight, we were a little concerned that we might get evicted.

Low and behold, we are still here and have finished unpacking. The rooms are coming together nicely. We have managed to purchase or “adapt” most of the electronics that we need. We are still desperately awaiting our Internet modem. As soon as it arrives we will be hooking up Apple TV and sitting down to watch all of the missed epsiodes of Gossip Girl! As you’ll notice in the pictures, we still need a few pieces of furniture and a few rugs and window treatments. We did purchase a used car here and have already made about 10 trips to Ikea, all of which have been unproductive due to either fussy children or our own annoying indecision. We did manage to make it home with a “bettesofa” and chair the other night for the playroom but, after hours of assembly, decided we didn’t like them so it looks like we’ll be returning to Ikea yet again!

I’m attaching a few photos (taken in December) and will post a few more soon. (P.S. The bells of the cathedral you can see through our bedroom window ring every 15 minutes from 07:00 to 22:00!!)