Let's Go Here and.. umm...Here and...Oh! Here!: Switzerland and Austria

A picture is worth a thousand words. With apologies for our ongoing negligence in posting new material, we hope this is true. Over the last three months, we have come to realise that though a month seems like a long time in which to complete a single post, every month is composed entirely of moments. Procrastination is always easy in the moment.

In an effort to eliminate this problem we have decided to divide our blog into more manageable chunks. Instead of plentiful writing with a few photos for accents, you will now find plentiful photos with only a small amount of writing for accents. By accents, we mostly mean context and possibly some of the better anecdotes.

As an added bonus, assuming the math above holds true, each blog entry will now contain something like ten times the material, condensed into only a fraction of the effort to read. How awesome is that?

Switzerland

(In which we visit with our friends Evgueni and Cybele and their son Alex, with some interloping by Marc)

(Left to Right): Adam, Aislinn, Cybele, Alex, Evgueni, Marc

Evgueni, Marc, and Adam were in the same class during their Engineering studies at Waterloo. At first meeting Evgueni appears proper, maybe even a bit reserved, with a cutting wit and a clear intellect. His subtle Russian accent clearly marks him as an evil genius, the kind of person one wouldn’t want to offend by mispronouncing his name. It was for this reason as much as for convenience that we took to calling him ‘E’ for short.

E and Cybele moved to Europe a few years ago, arriving in Basel, Switzerland relatively recently after E sold his soul to the man for a job with big pharma. Having seen the swanky campus where he works, the man pays well. Cybele in the meantime continues working as a mother and an artist out of their home. They live together with their young son, Alex, in a small flat in Basel.

Marc has an afro that is in constant competition with his personality to see which can fill more of the room. His intellect isn’t so much cutting as it is smothering. Spend five minutes with Marc and you’ll find yourself enveloped in his world with a whole slew of new perspectives which you had neither anticipated nor with which you are entirely comfortable. This is the mental equivalent of entering a souvenir shop to be polite after the shopowner kept insisting, “Don’t worry. You don’t need to buy anything. Looking is free,” only to find yourself on the way out holding a bag of extraordinary but strange novelties.

Unsurprisingly, Marc rarely lives longer than six months in the same place. Though recently his partner Gerid’s done a good job of keeping him more or less in the vicinity of Linz, Austria, most of the time.

E and Cybele kindly offered to host us at their place in Basel for a few days with day trips to Interlaken and Freiburg, Germany along the way.

Aislinn in Freiberg enjoying seasonal wild Pfifferlinge mushrooms with potato pasta with our stuffed Canadian travelling companions Benjy the Beaver and Smiley the Polar Bear

Evgueni and Alex admire the view while hiking the waterfalls of Interlaken, Swtizerland.

Along the way, we took a few days to ourselves to visit Lugano in Switzerland's only Italian county, Ticino. Adam had made a point of included a trip here with Aislinn. The views, food, and ridiculous levels of affluence are all stunning. Picture Italy with German efficiency and Swiss landscapes and prices.

Swiss Landscapes: View from near the train station in Lugano

Italian Lifestyle: A leisurely lunch on the piazza in Lugano

Marc arrived on our second-last day in Basel, joining Cybele and us for a day of touring the city including the special pre-Christmas fair and an afternoon visit to Evgueni’s workplace.

Sunset from Evgueni and Cybele’s apartment

Basel with celebratory Christmas Ferris Wheel

Alex sees the Ferris Wheel

Aislinn and Adam on the Love-Tester at the Fair

Hopefully it was just the freezing weather and lack of gloves that caused it. We ranked on the bottom most blue bar. The label was in German. There may have been a ‘u’ with two dots over it in there somewhere.

Complimentary visitors cappuccinos on imported Moroccan furnishings at Novartis

In medicine, before any lecture, a doctor has to acknowledge all potential pharma and medical funding he receives that may cause a conflict of interest. For the record, Novartis gave both my wife and I very very very good free cappuccinos on two separate occasions.

Visiting E’s workplace, the appeal of working there is obvious. Every part of the campus has its own theme from the imported Moroccan furnishings and thousand plus year old antiques of the visitors centre to the fake bird nests with hidden speakers broadcasting chirping on the main thoroughfare to the Frank Gehry designed building at the end of the street, and even the outstanding little detail below:

A Real Life Recreation of the Classic Optical Illusion: Is it a bird bath? Or two faces in profile?

Austria

Leaving Switzerland, we travelled with Marc back to Linz to visit with him and his partner, Gerid. At the train station, Marc and Aislinn decided it would be fun to hide while Adam ran to buy some water five minutes before their train left the station. Adam had no idea whether to board the train before it left or continue searching the station for them. There may have been some angry words shared.

Adam gives Aislinn the stink-eye

Gerid works as an educational coordinator for children’s groups at Ars Electronica in Linz, a museum dedicated to the intersection of science and art. For an example of one of their more novel display projects check out this link.