winter

last thursday i went to germany for groceries, except for this time to familia markt which was just glorious, it's like superstore. i was overwhelmed by the selection and spent two hours in there and too many euros. yea, and ate chips and drank beer on the train home.

friday went to zurich to play in this amateur volleyball tournament sponsored by alstom. there were like 80 teams or something, we got manhandled pretty well, i don't think any swiss people got the 'amateur' memo. they all showed up in court shoes and kneepads. in any case, i thought it was really fun and now i want to play volleyball again. got a couple good hits in any case.

saturday i made banana pancakes and i will certainly be making a lot more banana pancakes in the future. took a train to basel, walked around and hung out. it was pretty cold actually - it's been snowing the past few days, just a little bit though, but even at -5 or -10 it's soo cold for some reason. hung out at the christmas market in basel, i thought it was really good. drank some gluhwein (hot wine) and checked out the decorated streets. good stuff, took the hot wine into a bank to use the bank machine. is that weird? drinking wine from a mug at an atm? i wonder how that would be received in canada. went for dinner in this restaurant that i had found on the internet, basically it's some sort of vietnamese/chinese/indian/thai/indonesian type restaurant which was actually really, really good. i got some 'beef noodle soup' not quite the same as the original or whatever, but definitely really good. there is one in zurich as well so i will be going a few more times for sure. after dinner was a chilly walk to the theatre, went to go see the nutcracker ballet performed by the madrid ballet. basically i would not want to fight a male ballet dancer. i don't understand how it is possible for people to make their feet do that also. it was pretty cool though, i liked it and i definitely want to see another one, with a live orchestra next time hopefully too. wandering around the streets at night, we stumbled into some cafe/restaurant type thing where there was a live funk/soul/jazz band playing and chilled out there for awhile, pretty cool. stayed the night in basel in the plainest hostel room ever.

next day, woke up and hit up fondation beyeler, a really awesome museum art space thing. the building itself was beautiful, and there was some really amazing art in it as well. some van gogh, monet, a bunch of picasso, giacometti, cezanne, all of those guys basically were there. my favorite was an impressionist painting of water lilies by monet. the temporary exhibit was really great too, this artist named jenny holzer and she had a bunch of led lights and some really striking pieces i thought. very very cool place.

hopped on a train to cross the border to mulhouse in france, to check out that christmas market. probably don't need to go to mulhouse is my overall impression. the market was pretty good, the basel one was better though in my mind. again, all the streets were decorated and stuff which was quite nice. ended up walking around for awhile, bought a model dinosaur, drank a bunch of hot wine, ate macaroons which were so good, tried to find a restaurant but then just ended up going back to basel to the same place as the night before. it's called lily's and it is so good. they also have really good tea.

so far this week, there was a christmas party on monday, we did secret santa and beer pong tournament as well as photo contest results - the photo contest was an idea by brittany and i to have, it turned out quite hilarious and pretty well. did a bunch of cleaning last night, and then today, i have taken a sick day. i am unfortunately kinda sick, this is terrible. oh well. so far i have played guitar and ate soup, i guess i can't complain too much.

this weekend i'm gonna rock some skiing on sunday i hope. and getting ready for christmas trip. time's flown by so fast, can't believe it's already christmas. happy holidays everyone!