A Little Bit Later haha

Hey everyone! Sorry no post for a while. I'm hoping to do just at least a short update weekly to keep people who want to follow current buuuuuut..... not having internet in our apartment is seriously putting a krimp in my style.... haha

No, actually to tell the truth in some ways it has actually been rather nice to not have internet for a bit. Just sort of slow down and really be a part of only this world. But ya, it's definitely been hard because we can't really translate anything or look up any info about how to get places or where to go, let along talk to family and friends at home of course!

But other than that, things have been going pretty well!! :) Classes started officially this week. We had a one week workshop last week, taught by Mischa Leiner, on infographics. We wrote about some part of our lives or just ourselves for an hour and then spent most of the next 3 and 1/2 - 4 days making an infographic and a poster on what we wrote.

Then we had the weekend.

Then all of our classes officially started this week! :) I'm taking a German language class on Mondays as well as two seminar/lecture classes. The first is a 2 hour class on Film, Photography, and TV and the second is a one hour class on Cultural Theory. Then Tuesdays and Wednesdays I have studio from 830-430 for my Imagery class. In that class were working to visualize the thesis of a student in the science/engineering college. His thesis is on geomatics and global positioning and being able to not only create a virtual map of the entire globe, but then to be able to extract certain bits of information, for example, every sign in a city. It's a bit hard to understand at the moment, especially with the language difference but it's still pretty exciting! Then on Wednesday night I have a lecture series for an hour I think after class? Then on Thursdays and Fridays I have an infographic studio. The students here went to New York City for 10 days and collected data from a new city so I'm just collecting data from Basel and it will be made into my infographic! haha So that's classes!

Not too much else happening here. I got a bike!!!! SUPER exciting!!! As I mentioned in the first post, EVVVERYONE here bikes. I might actually collect info about bikes and uses and people and statistics and etc for my info-graphic. When I asked the guy in the store about the bike he was like "o, but it's a kid's bike" and I was like....."hmmmm... ok, but I'm kinda kid size sooooo....... I think this will work out well!" ha

So that's my awesome bike! haha and here are some more pictures since I know they're usually more fun than reading stuff! haha

So around here they have fountains like EVERYWHERE! I guess not seriously everywhere, but there are a LOT of them! At first Lisa and I were wondering why there were so many, then one day we learned that they're for drinking and filling your bottle! How awesome right? Here's one

They don't all look like this, but the Basilisk has been Basel's little creature for years so there are a lot that look just like this one.

There are tons of old churches here! Like at least 5 or 6 or more that I don't know of. Beautiful old buildings!! This one is the same one that I put up a pic of last time. I know the name now, it's St. Elizabeth.

The 60 stairs up to my apartment...... Just some of the minimum of 175 stairs that I climb daily! haha

They have these random trams sometimes! The whole rest of the train (the other 4 cars usually) will be whatever color the tram usually is (all green or all yellow) and then all the sudden the last train will be totally crazy sometimes! Like this one here covered in colorful graffiti! Or there is another one, that I'll get a picture of, that is a pig! They're hilarious and so random!

Another picture of me at the river! It's such a popular place to hang out by! Usually people are actually down on the steps that go to the river. It's actually a lot like the steps we have at River Front in Cincinnati....except people actually go there all the time, not just for fireworks! ha And the river is such a rich blue/green, not a nasty brownish-kinda blue.

And check it out! I own this part of town!! haha Ironically this is also the part of town my school is in! Speaking of which, here are some pics of school.

The picture of the letters in the wall are on the first floor of the building I believe. They're by Hoffman I believe as well. And I have no clue what that huge A is for, haha, it's just leaning against a wall in one of the class rooms and I thought it was neat.

And these are the three other exchange students from America. The one on the left goes to Carnegie mellon, the one in the middle is a senior this year at RISD, then the one on the right is in my year at DAAP just in the opposite section.

We also went to the Vitra, but I'll make another post about that later! It was really awesome though! And here's just a few into pictures. hahahah

They have miniatures of all the chairs (Akshata! haha) The place is really awesome! I'll make a post about it soon. haha But what's even more funny to me is that it's in the middle of nowhere kind of. It's about 10 or 15 minute drive from the German-Swiss boarder and across the street are hills of German farmland! It's kind of strange to cross the boarder from Switzerland to Germany near us because it's sort of an abrupt change from city to suburbs/rural land. It's really neat.

Well that's all for now! More to come later! Sorry to still not be keeping in great contact.... not having internet at home makes it ridiculously hard to keep in contact with people. But please do send me emails and I will respond! It's soo great to hear how everyone is doing!!! :)

Cheers!
Elishia

And so it begins!!!

SOOOOO, I'm here!! After 16 hours of traveling from San Diego (to Chicago, to London) to Basel, Switzerland I'm finally here!! Hooray!! Here is the first bit of information and pictures! I'm going to try to keep things up to date with what I'm up to over here and the many adventures that live becomes when you're in a foreign country!

First of all, it's SO true! Just about everyone speaks English! Not everyone can hold an intelligent conversation, though there are a good amount of people who can do that, but they all seem to be able to speak enough to get through whatever is happening at the moment and figure out what needs to happen! It's incredible! Now, just so people know, the official written language here is High German and the spoken language here is a Swiss German, so far from the high German that if all you speak is German you won't be able to understand more than a couple words of what they say. So already you know you're dealing with a relatively intelligent (haha or maybe not since they don't just speak what they read and write!) group of people for being able to use so fluidly two languages.

The sights are beautiful and rather normal at the same time. They have old historic buildings that are in perfect condition but they also have tons of graffiti and tons of wires everywhere for the trams which run off of electricity. Their public transportation systems are amazing! They have a combination of trams, which are mostly all you need, busses, which you use sometimes, and trains, which you use for long hauls. They're car traffic is really pretty light and it seems that most people either use the public transportation or their BICYCLES!!!! Bikes are the craziest things here!! At places there will literally be hundreds, or at least 1 hundred bikes locked up on the sidewalks (which are bigger than sidewalks in America). And back to the cars real quick, they stop for the pedestrian EVERY time! Like if you are approaching a cross walk, not like you're already beginning to step into it, I mean like you're still about 3 steps away from the crosswalk, the car will stop. Sometimes I'm not even aware that there is a car coming near cause I haven't even looked both ways to check for cars because I don't consider myself at the crosswalk and the car has already stopped!! It's insane! Hard to adjust to honestly. haha

Now for some pictures!!! :)

The houses here have lots of colors! It makes walking down the street a bit more pleasant.

Here is just a TINY example of how graffiti is everywhere! I guess Basel is just a city full of expressive people? haha O those artists/designers!












 
 This is The Rhine. It cuts right through Basel. The school I go to is on one side of the river and I live on the other side. From what I hear, people here are obsessed with the river and float down it for recreation, but I haven't personally seen this yet haha

 




A random boat on the Rhine. I just thought it was cute and like how it was flying it's Swiss flag!

This is a neat little statue thing they had on the river bank that was a miniature of the other bank of the river. You can see the church steeple and roof top in the statue right behind them on the river bank!

I just liked he sign and bike. All their signs are round and cute. haha :)

And meeee!

And a beautiful swan just came floating up the river! I'm not sure I've ever seen a swan in the wild (wild as in the middle of the city...? haha) in real life, nor have I been so close to one! It was really nice.

The street performers play the accordian here! It's quite nice. Definitely enhances the "romance" of the city. And look! Even the "bum" has a bike and is well kept! But speaking of bikes..........

In this second picture the bikes went on in clusters like that for the entire block. And that picture only shows 1/2 of that cluster. Sometime soon I'll seam together a panoramic of this block so you can get an understanding for just how many bikes were parked here and how many people ride bikes! Like I said in an earlier email, bikes are treated like cars. They have to follow all the same rules, they're not ridden on the sidewalks anywhere that I've seen, and if you're "caught speeding" on a bike you can have your driver's license taken away! Bikes are serious business here! haha

 Here are some trams.

This is just a small example of all the wires needed to run the trams. The night thing is though that unlike telephone wires that go to EVERY house, the tram wires are only on and above roads that have trams on them! SO they are not at all everywhere, but where they are, and especially where trams cross eachother's paths and have exchanges, there are SOO many wires!

This is a really neat fountain. I'm going to go back and read more about it hopefully, but the lady we're renting from told Lisa that this fountain has like 7 or 8 different little fountains and each one represents the 7 or 8 different character types. Overall, just seeing all the pieces at work at once is really neat and the pieces themselves are beautiful! We walked over the the church steeples behind us in this picture next.

The church was beautiful! I don't know the name, but it was beautiful!




















Now, this next set of pictures if for Andrew! haha And I think everyone can enjoy seeing some everyday differences in life from here to there.

This is our toilet! haha Not sure why they tank is so high up but it is! and you pull the chain on the left to flush it! By they way we have a room for the toilet and a separate room for the shower!

This is our light switch. You just press the button. Below it is an outlet. The button makes it super easy to turn off and on lights, even with arms full! Those efficient Swiss! They really are sooo efficient! Lisa and I decided that their designs are great because they had to learn to design in order to have any sense of order in life! They have 3 languages printed on every grocery item! The top is High German, then French, then Italian. On top of that, all the nutrition information is usually in all three languages as well! They had to be efficient and learn to organize information well!

 









This is how all the door handles in our house look and the picture on the right is seriously the keys we use within our apartment to lock doors (like the closets or the bathroom doors).

Final image for this post, this is how house keys are cut! with a series of circles carved out of the key. And they're tiny! Well, not that tiny, but they're maybe about 1 and a half inches.












Well, this is all for now. haha I'm currently using starbuck's internet and for some reason it won't let me register properly so I have to keep re-registering every 10 minutes........ so I'm going to go for now. But look forward to posting more and sharing this exprience with everyone! :)

Love Elishia