Today marks our one year anniversary of living in Basel! Though our German is still embarrassingly limited, we feel very settled and comfortable with our Swiss surroundings.
Whether our neighbors have purchased earplugs or have adapted to our noisy ways, we'll never know, but we greet each other with "morgens" and "gruezis" and then keep to ourselves in typical Swiss fashion. I've mastered the grocery store run and occasionally exchange a few words with the butcher, the cheese lady and the checkout person. As long as they don't ask me anything other than "Supercard?" and some other expression which means "are you collecting stickers for our current giveaway?", I think I might pass as a local (nevermind that I'm usually wearing yoga pants--a total red flag!). And the kids are now in local activities--soccer (fussball) and ice skating (eislaufen)--putting us even deeper into the mix. That said, we don't stray far from our expat pack. We are so thankful to have met so many great English-speaking friends from around the world and to be able to share these experiences together.
While the travel has slowed down a bit since our big Italy trip in June, we've been venturing to France and Germany for daytrips quite often. Ben and I are headed to Beaune, France for an overnight getaway in a couple of weeks and are looking forward to sampling some Burgundy wine. And we have a ski trip in Verbier, Switzerland planned for late February.
We still remark on a regular basis how amazing it is that we are living in Switzerland, and we recognize how lucky we are to be having these experiences. We are doing a little re-arranging after the holidays that will allow us to have a guest room, so we hope that some of you will come join us and experience some of Basel and Switzerland yourself!
Tschus!
