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Still Montreal…

Enjoying myself in Canada – but it's a struggle not to buy loads of stuff, considering the low prices everywhere… *g*

Thanks for your email, Missy – looking forward to Sunday a lot, can't wait to meet you!
And Jack (if you have the time to read this, you poor offline sod LOL), miss you too, glad to hear you're still hanging in there…

My friend Deb probably had her baby last night – hope everything went well, sending lots of good thoughts in your direction, sweetie!

Those I haven't mentioned now – thinking of you anyway, in between sightseeing and browsing stores… And Mami – I talked French with one of my room mates! Isn't that cool?

Take care!

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Montreal, Canada

After a hot and pleasant stay in Provincetown I arrived in Montreal with the over night bus – a veery long drive with by far not enough sleep…
Therefore I haven't done much today, specially since the weather was really nasty.

The best definitely was my arrival – I walked up to the hostel when everyone was standing outside shivering because there had been a fire alarm. Not less than FOUR fire engines came – but luckily it had only been a water flood and no serious damage had been done.

The big thing today was naturally 9/11, even if in Canada most people went about business as usual, it was still ever present… Also there were sharp controls at the borders, a reminder every time.

I don't want to get gloomy, so let's close this with a big hug to all my family and friends – I think of you, even if I don't find the time to answer your emails…

And Sibylle – there's no fee on travellers cheques, so you don't have to worry about that. It's like cash over here. *hugs*

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Cape Cod

Only got five minutes until the library of Provincetown closes, but I just wanted to letyou all know that I`ve left Boston. I really enjoyed the last two days there – me and one of my room mates from the hostel (Jenny from Ohio) paired up and went exploring together. Such a great town, a great mix of old town atmosphere and upbeat young people…

And Cape Cod seems really beautiful – I`m looking forward to spending some time walking the beaches… More later – I miss you all and thanks for all the email! I read it all, even if I don`t get around to answering.

And Deb – thinking of you, hope tomorrow`s the day… Big hugs, everyone!

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Boston…

Is such a great city! I enjoy every minute here, I love the contrast of old brick buildings and shiny office towers…

Met some nice people at the hostel – they might take me with them one night, which is cool!

Bostonians are generally very fashionable – and they love to jog! I spent some time yesterday at the Charles River (that`s probably my favorite place here, so beautiful!) and felt completely out of place… LOL

Today I`ll go to Cambridge to see Harvard and then walk around the city some more. Boston has the perfect size, it`s not too big and anonymous – and have I already mentioned that it`s beautiful?

Thanks for your emails – hope everyone is doing fine! I even managed to answer some this morning, but now I`m hungry and am out of one dollar bills anyway…

So take care, until the next time! Hugs…

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Woohoo – made it to Boston!

No problems getting here – and it`s only 3pm, so I`ll check out the freedom trail now… The internet access is somewhat crappy, everything takes waay to long, so no writing email today. Maybe tomorrow. Thanks to everyone who`s written to me – love you guys!

The flight was okay, I got to watch The Importance of Being Earnest (Marrie – your man… lol) and parts of About a Boy. My neighbour was not very chatty, but that was okay with me.

Still so excited – sorry for being so jumbled… Talk to you later!

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Itinerary the second

Here's what Sibylle and I have planned for the second half of my trip… Unfortunately the visit with Deb won't work out – such a pity, but it can't be helped, she's got visitors coming already. *sniff*
Hopefully we'll manage to meet another time!

The first part of the itinerary is here – Sibylle and I meet up in NYC on September 24 and stay there for a week. That should give us plenty of time to explore some of the many many sights of that city and enjoy the nightlife…

On Oct 1 we'll head South to North Carolina (overnight on a bus – cool! Not. *g*), to Cary to be exact, which is right outside of Raleigh. This is where Sibylle spent an exchange semester some years ago and she's looking forward to meeting her host family and some of her teachers again.

Around Oct 5 we'll then head for Florida (instead of Alabama *sniff*), go see Gainesville (to check out the UF – I'd like to spend a semester there in 2004), then go someplace warm and sunny for some relaxation on the beach. Maybe Key West, or Tampa – it's not so easy to find somewhere beatiful that's reachable by Greyhound and has cheap accomodation.

The last few days we'll be in Miami at the beach and in the clubs, going to see the Everglades (a dream of mine) and maybe spend a day at the beach of Ft. Lauderdale.

And on Oct 13 our plane leaves – back home to prepare for a test only one week later…

This is probably my last entry done from home – stay tuned for news from Boston! (The day after tomorrow – can't believe it!)

Now I need to get busy – still got loads of stuff to do…

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Vienna, Streetparade, and Märrie's Visit

Before leaving for my trip I thought I'd update here – with the new pics from the trip to the family gathering in Austria and the following day in Vienna with my brother, from one of the high points of each year, the big open air rave in Zurich, and from the visit of one of my best friends, Märrie from Bonn.


August 5: Vienna


My brother Michael in front of the national library, with some of the famous 'fiakers', the horse drawn carriages for tourists.


The 'Stephansdom' (cathedral) mirrored…


Me at the river Donau (Danube?) – taking a break from all the sightseeing.

August 10: Streetparade


Four girlies having fun in the rain… (Sibylle, Taptim, Helena and I)


We were attractions! *g* (Sibylle, Matthias, Martin, Taptim and I)


Trying hard to keep warm… LOL I'm pretty proud of the skirt – I made it myself!

August 11-17: visit from online friend Märrie


Märrie in the garden of Basel's 'Münster' (cathedral)…


… and in the staircase of the Münster tower.


Us at one of my favorite places in Basel – the Rhine.


With Sibylle at the national exhibition 'Expo'. In the background you can see an artificial cloud.


And here are Märrie and Sibylle inside that cloud.


A rather 'artistic' pic Sibylle took of Märrie and me.

I'll add pictures of vacations and trips I've done over the years – but I'll backdate them, so they're in chronological order. If you're interested in pics of America, Namibia or other travels you have to scroll down in this journal…

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Trip update

Thought that it was high time that I fill you in on the latest developments in my travel plans…

There are not even two weeks left until my plane leaves for Boston and just this morning I put together an itinerary for the first three weeks. After that I'll meet up with Sibylle in NYC and we'll travel on Southwards together…

– Sept 4-8: Boston. The hostel is already reserved and I'm looking incredibly forward to seeing that supposedly so beautiful city!

– Sept 8-11: Provincetown, Cape Cod. Some nature is absolutely essential – even if it means having to buy an extra bus ticket because Greyhound doesn't go there…

– Sept 11-14: Montréal. Already wanted to go there the last time, now it finally works out! Looks as if I'll spend 9/11 on the bus – suits me just fine, truth be told!

– Sept 15-18: Pittsburgh, PA. Visiting Rhonda and Missy – that's even worth the 19 hours bus ride! 😉

– Sept 18-21: Washington, DC. An absolute must naturally – and if I get the chance to meet up with Mike and maybe Nik (who I haven't asked yet… *g*) I might just stay longer and skip the next thing on the list:

– Sept 21-23: Philadelphia. If it works out it's cool – if not I'll live… And it annoys me to no end that the hostel there does not accept credit cards – I don't want to send them a traveller's cheque by mail!

– Sept 23-Oct 1: New York City. Sibylle arrives on Sept 24 and we'll take a week to see the sights and enjoy the life of the 'Big Apple'…

After that we'll probably head to Cary, NC to visit Sibylle's former host family, then down South to see Deb (yay!) before heading to Florida to catch some sun before going back on Oct 14…
Those six weeks will be over way too fast, I already see that coming! *sniff*

But it's going to be a whole lot of fun and I can't wait! There's a ton of stuff I should do – 13 days left and counting… lol

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Some pics from London

I've scanned some of the pics I took – not a lot of tourist sights, as we did them in 98 and didn't bother taking the same pics yet again…. Sibylle has also taken some, which are not yet developped, but I thought I'd go ahead and post some of mine anyway.



Me in the British Museum – I love all things Egyptian, so this was heaven!


After the England-Denmark match the whole city was celebrating and singing “Football's coming home…” – here on Trafalgar Square. Well, thanks to Brazil it didn't exactly turn out that way.


Feeding animals was very big on our todo list – we came to St.James's park not mainly to see the Changing of the Guard, Buckingham palace or the Queen at a parade, but to handfeed squirrels and birds. Sibylle did take pics at that parade – I'll post them as soon as I have them, promised! *g*


On the Portobello Road Market we found some really nice tops – and it's a very pretty part of London as well.


Well, this last pic (for now) was not taken in London but right after our return to Basel, when we realized that we don't have a single pic of the two of us together. We came from maximum 25°C in London to almost 40°C – and promptly went to our favorite place in summer: our local open air pool.

That's it for the moment – the next planned trip is a weekend in Austria, a big family meeting, to which I'm not exactly looking forward…

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London report

Well, I'm back home again after five great days in London. Not everything went the way we planned or imagined it, but all in all we had a good time!

One thing first – London is incredibly expensive! Suddenly Switzerland doesn't seem all that bad… *g*

We spent a lot of time walking around, seeing sights (though most of them not from the inside because they want horrendous entrance fees) and strolling over various markets like the Covent I didn't buy a lot – just two tops (which are both very special!) and some really cute panties. Enjoyed seeing all the 70ies stuff and some of the tourist merchandise is really funny.

All that walking around was terribly exhausting – I had completely forgotten how hard the tourist thing is on your feet… So we ended up only going out twice and just once to a club (again – the money…). But we did watch the England – Netherlands game in a pub, which was a blast!
Before that we even got to see the Queen and Prince Andrew and William at a parade – really impressive, all those wonderfully archaic uniforms and beautiful horses!

A couple of times we went to St. James's Park (right at Buckingham Palace) to fed the birds and squirrels – they are so tame, they eat right out of one's hand! It was such a great experience – specially the squirrels!

Our sleeping arrangements turned out good, too – we stayed at Juliette's (Sibylle's boyfriend's cousin) place a bit outside of the city only the first and the last night, the other three nights we had the appartment of a friend of Juliette's for ourselves. That was perfect – in the West of the city with the tube and a super market nearby. Sibylle and I were almost overwhelmed by Juliette's and her friend's (whom we didn't even meet!) generosity – we were incredibly lucky!

We didn't meet Rolly at all – we text messaged back and forth and I called him once, but it simply didn't work out. Oh well, maybe next time… Same thing was with Jan, but we didn't get bored anyway.

On Sunday (after a very short night!), our last real day in London, Sibylle was a bit sick so we didn't do a lot. We went to the London Dungeons (yuck, torture and murder – gruesome stuff!) and then to Juliette instead of doing some more sightseeing. But since we'd been to London already four years ago it wasn't so bad and we enjoyed watching TV shows in English – I even caught the end of an “Enterprise” episode!

Well, that was probably about it – I'll scan some pictures as soon as I have them developped…