We went to Basel to visit Evelyne, one of our international students who lived with us in November 2005. It was great to see her again and she kindly loaned us her 2 bedroom apartment for 2 nights and she went and stayed with her boyfriend Marcel.
Switzerland is very unique in that they have 3 national languages: French, Swiss-German and Italian so most Swiss are bilingual. All official documentation is in 3 languages and in addition a lot of the 5 million population speak English.
As we were in Basel on a Sunday Evelyne and Marcel took us on a walking tour of the city. We had great weather yet again and enjoyed eating roasted chestnuts from a street vendor. We went to 'Three Corners' in the city where you can see Switzerland, France and Germany all in the same vicinity. While there we also saw a convertable car/boat 'drive' into the Rhine River which we were standing beside (see photo).
On Sunday night Evelyne drove us to her parents where we had a lovely family meal of traditional Swiss Raclette. For those of you who don't know about Raclette, you have little ovens about the size of a large dinner plate placed on the table. Each person has their own little triangular non stick pan about the size of your palm and you put a piece of cheese in it plus you could add onion, bacon, mushroom, gherkin and then you put your pan in the oven and melt everything and then when it's all gooey and yummy you scrape it on to new baby potatoes on your plate and eat it. Delicious and the kids loved doing their own 'cooking'. Though Evelyne's parents don't speak English, Evelyne and Marcel did and her brother and sister were also there and they spoke English too. We had a great evening and after stocking up on some Swiss chocolate it was time to move north.