Haus Hunt Finale

Well, I know you've all been waiting on pins & needles for the conclusion of the Haus Hunt!

Unfortunately, it didn't go exactly as I'd planned. We didn't get the beautiful building that I fell in love with (even with the stairs & laundry issue).

Then I found this other place that definitely was lacking on the older charming details, but made up for in space, space, space! There were closets in every single room! A gigantic win! Plus, it was under budget. But alas... we lost that one as well! Grr...

Finally, Denise (our great welcome lady) found us a place through a friend that we were able to take a look at before it even went on the market. While the bedrooms are a tad on the tiny side (actually if they had closets and didn't require us to add wardrobes into the space the size would work just great), the kitchen is quite large (for apartments) and has both a living area and dining room. There are fabulous floor to ceiling windows throughout AND it's under budget. So even thought it's smaller than we were hoping, we will still have a guest room ready & welcome for visitors!

Here are a couple pics of our new home!

Matt is crossing his fingers we get to keep the face chair.

And I'm officially a crazy person and have already put an alert out to see if the 1 bedroom next to our 3 bedroom comes available and maybe we could have a whole guest suite & office for Matt! Fingers crossed! :P

Accepting visitors beginning Feb 15, 2015! Who wants to call dibs on the kiddy truck room?

Christmas Came Early!

and by that I mean, my mom came to visit us in Basel! The best Christmas gift a girl could ask for. Being with family is my favorite part of the holidays.

She arrived on Sunday and even though the weather was the pits & I was feeling under the weather myself, my mom of course was up for anything & everything! We still managed to get out & explore the Christmas celebrations in Basel.

While the Herbstmesse brought a unique spirit to Basel, I find Christmas here to be truly special. The city comes alive!

Of course, we spent quite a bit of time roaming around the city and checking out the Christmas market.

Signing the "Basel Wish Book"

For the nineteenth time, the traditional Basel Wish Book is accessible in the inner courtyard of the Town Hall for all members of the public – both local residents and visitors from around the world – to add their Advent wishes. Over the entire Christmas period and into the new year visitors can fill the book with their private thoughts, wish-lists for Santa Claus and hopes for peace, love and good health.

One of her 1st nights here, Matt took over baby duties again and we headed out on the town so I could show her the city all lit up! (She actually took most of these photos. Certainly a better photographer than I!)

Does this setting look familiar?

Famous ornament shop of Johann Wanner

We also had our 1st fondue!! at a famous little "traditional" place in the city center. It was delicious, but also the most expensive fondue one could imagine. As is the Swiss way!

  

We also took my first trip down to the "old town" which is where all the traditional Basel families live. (Meaning those families who have lived in Basel for centuries). Also, where the Basel Paper Museum is located. This was a fun treat to visit. If you have kids aged 5 - 12 it would be even better as there are lots of fun activities, i.e. actual paper making, stamping, printing making, etc. Although incredibly interesting for big kids as well.

 

We also partook in a Basel holiday tradition of eating these little guys on Dec 6th.

"St. Nicholas Day on December 6th: On the 6th of December the swiss tradition is to eat Grättimaa and drink hot chocolate! Grättimaa, as it is called in the area of Basel, originally came from the German-speaking central plain, the Basel and Neuchatel area. Some say “Gritti” refers to the figure’s legs being apart, others think that it means "old".

Another tradition I read is that if kids are good, St Nicholas comes to their homes on Dec 6th delivering the Grättimaa treats.

No matter the tradition, they were delicious!

 Now, most importantly, we all know why she really made the trip over...

We had a great time playing in the parks and around town.

Thanks for our 1st advent calendar great-grandmother!

Someone had so much fun, he tried to sneak home with Kar Kar!

soon we'll be celebrating the holidays back in the states! We are all incredibly excited. :)

A Grateful Thanksgiving

...pretend I posted this on Friday as that's when I wrote it and now I'm a little lazy on Sunday to update the details... :P

Things I am most grateful for this Thanksgiving: Love & Technology. :)

We feel so blessed for the joy each of you brings to our lives and we are lucky that even though we are far away by distance you are incredibly close in our hearts. I love that technology enables us to stay closely connected while we are abroad and especially during family holidays, which I find are the hardest times to be away from the ones you love. I'm beyond grateful for each and every email, adorable eCard, photo like / comment, blog comment and FaceTime / Skype date! We felt so loved this Thanksgiving. Thank you!

Obviously, I dressed the little man up for Thanksgiving as ~80% of my daily entertainment involves dressing up / role playing with my son. :)

Love from our little Butterball

 Other than that, unfortunately, our Thanksgiving was pretty "non-traditional." In Basel, it was the opening night of the Christmas Market! Get excited! This is no ordinary Black Friday affair. While the wifely thing to do would've been to stay home and cook my husband a magnificent Thanksgiving feast upon his return home from work, he agreed to be a great husband and give me a little evening to myself. (I know the fact that it was Thanksgiving wasn't ideal, but we're doing a mini Turkey, aka. Chicken, dinner tonight. :) ) I heard that the opening ceremony of the Christmas Market was not to be missed.

While Matt took on bath time and bed time duties, I headed into the center. Up at Munsterplatz (site of the Ferris Wheel during Herbstmesse), was the opening. When I arrived the music had already started, the shops were lit up (but you couldn't buy anything yet), however, the tree was not lit nor were any of the lights on the trees or anything else. Plus, they had a stand setup with free baked treats plus hot cider or coffee. I grabbed a cookie (or two) and a hot cider and found myself a spot to view the stage and the shops.

Pre-lighting

A little before 7pm the carolers started. Then the President spoke and while we spoke all the lights from the shops went out. And while I didn't understand his German speech, I did understand when the countdown begun!

...drei, zwei, eins....!

I loved the carolers, all the lights and all the adorable little crafts & goodies. I don't know if it was the fact that it was Thanksgiving or the start of Christmas, but while I really enjoyed the ceremony, it also made me miss my family. So I headed back home for some hugs and many more thoughts of all of you.

Happy Thanksgiving! Let the Season of Giving continue! Lots of love.


p.s. WahooWa!!! :P

We're teaching him about disappointment early...

Haus Hunt: Quick Update

I visited my dream home yesterday. ... There are a couple quirks that make it slightly less dreamy...

#1. There are stairs. Even though the listing says "Lift" and there is definitely a lift, there are also 2 sets of stairs before one can get to the lift. I should've known from this photo...

Let me zoom in for you.

 

This is the 1st set to even get into the front door, then the 2nd 4/5 stair set is just inside. Again, no baby, no problem. Unfortunately, our little guy LOVES sleeping in his stroller.
I did a practice run with taking the stroller down these mini flights of stairs. Absolutely doable, slow-going, but doable. However, there's no way he'd sleep through that.

This prompted me to do a quick search for "Portable Stroller Ramps"  I don't think such things exist, however, I did come across these beauties.  For dogs. Thoughts? :)

#2. The listing says "Washer & Dryer Room".  My interpretation was that said room was in the apartment. Au contraire, mon frère. It's in the basement. You can actually stand up in the laundry room, which is an upgrade from our Chatham basement. Yes, accessible by said "lift", however a communal washer / dryer. Ugh. They actually had someone come out to see if they could add in a washer/dryer to the apartment and either their telling the truth & "there's no room" or it's cost prohibitive.

Other than those 2 flaws, I still LOVE this apartment. Love the space. Love the neighborhood (2 blocks from the zoo, right near 2 tram lines, a grocery store across the street that's open on Sundays (a true gem!!!), 2 blocks to one of the big parks...

We applied for the apartment. At what point in this post did you think I'm starting to go crazy? :) Was is the dog ramp?

They still have more showings next week so we need to delay our response to the other listing that we already have been accepted for (the modern angle-y place) and wait to see how this one goes.

I feel like we're getting close. Either way, I'm thinking we should have a place by the end of next week.

Haus Hunt: Part 2

Wow! So much can happen in 3 days in the Basel housing market.

Monday: We went to see #4. It was just lovely! Everything was renovated with great attention to detail, i.e. how they hid the washer / dryer, the entry way lighting, the coutertops / all surfaces. Modern functionality but still maintained that charm I'm looking for with the floors, windows, etc. Not to mention the current tenants have great taste (see cowhide rug. ;) .. plus the blue fridge in the kitchen is completely full of wine. these are our people!)  Unfortunately, the layout wasn't going to work. Where the little guy's bedroom would be was on the main street and it was loud! And there was no room for a guest room... the hunt continues...



Tuesday morning: Went to see #5, the modern building with the funky angles. And it is funky! Why do I keep finding places with the bathroom right up against the kitchen / dining area? We could certainly make it work, but here are the pros & cons.

Pros:
- Enough rooms for our liking (although so many weird angles & wasted space)
- Great outdoor play area behind the building
- Tons of light
- 3 terraces!
- All the modern amenities (washer / dryer, dishwasher, etc. p.s. no places have AC)
- Matt's commute, which also translates to more time home with us.

Cons:
- the Kitchen! Yikes! Again, for such a great idea of a space this kitchen is just plain wacky. Basically, a one-sided galley kitchen. Kitchen in photo is smaller than it appears. I thought I could put a little shelf / counter on the opposite wall / window, but then I dont think I'd actually fit in the kitchen... Let's be honest here, if this were Shanghai or NJ, it wouldn't really be that big of a deal being that we ordered in 90% of our meals. However, here I have made dinner every single night except one. (It's expensive to eat out!) I think I might go insane in this kitchen...
- the Stairs are metal. This may seem like an odd thing, but the conclusion is that, man those stairs are loud!!! Even when we took our shoes off they were loud. For a sleeping baby this doesn't seem like a great situation, but think this was be fixed with a a rug on the stairs? (not sure how we would install?)
- the Neighborhood. It's just removed from most of the best parts of the city. So while it is conveniently located on 2 different tram lines and would be easy to hop into & out of the city center. I'd spend most of my time doing that...
- Top of our price range. (Learning: Matt is totally immune to cost if the place is a 5min walk to the office)

We applied for the place. (That's how the system works here. You pretty much apply for everything you think you'll like and then if the landlord accepts your application, you are the winner! Then you decide if you actually want to draft & accept a lease, at which point actual $$ changes hands.) Normally, it takes a couple days / week for them to review your application, but we already heard back that we got this place! So that's good news.

Tuesday Afternoon: We got another place! I didn't even mention this one before because Matt isn't keen on this because his commute would be 25min on the tram (or 10min on his scooter! which I'm arguing is perfectly acceptable!).

Pros: 
- Great space! Enough rooms + tons of play room for the little man and outdoor areas.
- All the amenities we want
- I like the neighborhood better
- Built-in closets. Sounds silly, but as with most European apts there are no closets so we would need to purchase wardrobes...

Cons:
- Mainly Matt's "lengthy" commute
- Slightly dark? But I think I could freshen that up with decor.
- Only 1.5 bathrooms
- Nothing great to look at, but certainly not a deal breaker
- Top of our price range. Do we really want to pay that much for a place we don't LOVE?

Tuesday Evening: I received an email from Denise titled "This is IT!" ... oh so true, This beauty came on the market! It's exactly what I'm looking for!!! 5 rooms (3 bedrooms), building from 1905 but renovated in 2013, balcony + outdoor shared garden, and in the area I want to live in!! (15min tram / less than 10min scooter commute for Matt. A great compromise!)

The catch... everyone wants this apartment. They have an open house tomorrow afternoon (Denise tried to get us in earlier but no luck). This means we definitely have to put our best foot forward as we might not get it. (There was another apartment that we also didn't get because we weren't willing to sign a 3 year lease with a parking space, because we don't need a parking space and 3 years is a long time!)  This one is already at the top of our budget, so we don't want to put anything else on the table and we could easily be beat by someone who is willing to pay more (i.e. there is an additional room you can rent for another $200 / month. We don't need it but someone else might, which would sweeten the deal for the landlord).

While I have the floor plan, I've hesitated designing my dream home just yet as I don't want to get my hopes up.

In conclusion, wish us luck!! Cross your fingers for us! ... the Haus Hunt saga continues...

Saturday in Rheinfelden

Saturday we took a trip to Rheinfelden (Switzerland), not to be confused with Rheinfelden (Germany). The German town is right across the river, via walking bridge so it wouldn't be too devastating if you got them confused.

Rheinfelden means "fields of the Rhine", and it's only an 11min trip on the train outside of Basel (same train you would take to the Zurich airport).

Our trip to Rheinfelden served 3 purposes:
1. I wanted to test out the train. See how easy it was to buy tickets, check out the station, etc. --> Incredibly easy. Although we may not have purchased the correct tickets, but I think we got that figured out. :)
2. I wanted to test out EZ on the train. Will he like the train? (He loves moving objectives so my theory was yes.) Will the stroller fit on the train? --> He "loved" it? Well, he slept the entire time, so that's the best we can ask for! And there's a handicap car so we "strolled" right on.
3. The weather was lovely and we heard Rheinfelden was just a cute little picturesque town to walk about for the day. --> It was lovely! I swear all these cities are too cute. We walked around the little town & shops for a bit. Then the plan was to play with EZ in the park with a variety of different playgrounds, but again, he slept through the whole trip.

Of course I still took a ton of photos! No family selfies sadly.

And our tour wouldn't be complete without a Flipagram! :P (just makes it so easy to not have to decide between all the photos)

On our way in we noticed this huge castle right before our stop at Rheinfelden. We forgot about it until our return train trip. Of course at that point we googled what it was and turns out it's this Feldschlösschen castle brewery! (of the Carlsberg group)

We could've walked there and continued our little adventure, but now we will just have to go back! :) (Plus, there's a 9 hole golf course at the same location. Just saying)

Also, a future visitor excursion could include a boat trip through the locks on the Rhine from Basel to Rheinfelden.