28 July

In the morning (3 July) we woke up and headed into the old town of Basel for breakfast. Christoph lives in a flat with a fabulous view. We crossed on the lovely little ferry, which is powered by the current, running along a wire, and simply moving the rudder to change direction.

We only had a short time in Basel because we had to get on the road to go up to an SCA event in Germany, but we had time to have a quick look at two of Basel's most beautiful buildings. The cathedral:

and the brightly painted "rathaus"

 

The SCA event was held up near Koln. I got to meet a good friend of Sarahs, bumped into my friend Dan (the only person apart from Sarah that I really knew there) and met my new local shire. Local as in it is about 3 hours drive away in Stuttgart. Still, it felt a bit like coming home. A kind gentle let us sleep in his van and he and some others lent us feasting gear. I had my new "Penny Dress" to wear, which felt odd, being early period, but is quite stylish. (Thanks to Katrina who made it for me!)

Sadly the next day I had to part with Sarah and our girly adventure together ended. Sarah went on to other more exciting places and I came home to Geneva.

The next weekend, I couldn't face my washing so decided to fly to London for the weekend to check out the summer sales (As ya do). A fun trip in some ways, but not entirely trouble free. I did go and see "Jerry Springer, the Opera" which was a total hoot and I would recommend to anyone who wants a good laugh.

27 July

So... where was I? I know, I know, it has been ages... but hey its not like you lot have been nagging me for an update! Remember, you can always email me!

Ok... so in the morning (2 July) we started heading towards Basel and Christoph. We got a tiny bit misdirected, much to our fortune, and ended up in Stein am Rhein. Wow... what an amazingly fortunate misdirection! Mind you, on the way to Stein am Rhein we drove through the most gorgeous little towns - check these pics out.. It was particularly interesting travelling with Sarah to these, as she is pretty familiar with medieval and renaissance architecture but found it pretty challenging dating some of the churches we came across because their styles were quite different.

We also decided that it must be written in Swiss law somewhere that everyone must grow geraniums in their window boxes, and that there must be a clock within visual range of anyone in the centre of town - preferably on the church.

 

Now, Stein am Rhein is a gorgeous little walled town, and definitely worth a visit if you are heading in this direction. The walls of the buildings are painted quite spectacularly, as you will see in the following photographs.

 

There is a great museum too, but it was the Abbey/Monastery which really captured us both.

First we saw the wine press. Now this photo is especially for Drakey... if I can read the carving on the side correctly, it was made in 1711 - Drake, make sure you click on the thumbnail so you get the whole thing!

The Monastery itself was fabulous. A labyrinthian building it was filled with progressively more and more gorgeous wardrobes, wall paintings, ceiling bosses and tiles. I am going to have to make a screen saver so you can see all the photos I took, but here are a few tasters.

Unfortunately some of the best paintings were in a room that we could not enter but I took some shots through the door.

We could easily have spent the whole day here, but knew that we had to get moving. As we travelled through the city of Schaffhausen, we saw what looked like a bit of a fortification on a hill and just had to have another stop. It was a rather odd building with cavernous vaulted ceilings, so we climbed up the narrow spiral ramp to get a fabulous view of the city. The building seemed to have been started in the 16th century, but as these things do, grew and changed until being finished in the 18th century. The ramps rather than stairs were so that they could drag cannon up to the top.

While resting at the top, we were incorporated by a group of young men into what seemed to be some sort of initiation rite for others wanting to be in the "club". We took the part of "royalty", getting a bow and the lifting of the hat as they ran past us counting the tables "Einz, Zwei, Drei, Einz, Zwei Drei!"

It seemed somehow rude to take photos of them, so you will only see photos of the building and view from it.

Off we went again. As we drove along though, we noticed a small sign saying "St Blasien". Well this made us think of Angela, and since we had an hour or so to spare, we decided to take a bit of a detour to check it out. We wound our way through some spectacular forest: I can't get over how bright and green the foliage is here. After about 20 or so kms of winding roads, we came to St Blasien.

St Blasien is just a small town, with maybe a couple of hundred houses. What we didn't expect in this little village in the middle of a forest was A MUCKING GREAT CATHEDRAL.

We were stunned. We were gobsmacked. We wandered around this huge building going "what the!!??". I even asked Sarah to pinch me because I couldn't believe my eyes. Here, in this backwater village is (I discovered later) the third largest cathedral in Europe. Modeled on St Pauls no less.

Now we have NO idea why they built the third largest cathedral in Europe in the middle of the Schwarzwald (yes, we had wandered a) into Germany and b) into the black forest, without realising it). If anyone out there knows, please feel free to tell me! We just wandered around it being bewildered and stunned, and searching in vain for some information on it.

After this, rather unexpected experience, we focused ourselves and drove to Christoph's house. We had something to eat in Christoph's local pub and then curled up on the floor of his music room for the night.  

 

5 July

You are very overdue indeed for an update on my life! I just was too busy while I was in Australia to update this page, and I figured most of you would be seeing me to catch up anyway.

I arrived in Australia on Thursday evening. Adrian was kind enough to pick me up from the airport and I got to see his latest home in Bringelly. Unfortunately the grass and dust meant that I started sneezing the moment I got off the plane and basically didn't stop for my whole time in Australia.

On Friday night we went to dinner to celebrate my friend Del's birthday - it was fun being a bit of a surprise visitor for some of the people there, and although I didn't get to catch up with them as such, it was nice to be back among familiar faces.

On Saturday evening I helped celebrate Del's birthday again; he had booked out a corner of a lovely bar in Manly and had a band playing, so I got to do a bit of dancing. After the bar closed we went in search of a place to get coffee and discovered that Manly is not the place to find it!

Sunday was my mum's birthday celebration so I headed down to Canberra in the morning. The whole herd were there, including my brother David, who was visiting from Indonesia.

Monday was appointment day... doctor, accountant etc. Monday night I got together with Concordia Mirabilis for a rehearsal, discovering that we had a potential concert on Saturday.. why not.

Tuesday was the day I had set aside to sort out my shed. Of course Canberra is in a dreadful state of drought and hasn't seen much in the way of rain. So what day does it decide to drizzle? You guessed it. Tuesday. Sigh... That evening I went out with some of my family and had Thai food.

Wednesday was my "Kiriel at home" day, where I stayed at my parent's house for the whole day and evening, open to visits from anyone. This was the opportunity to show photos, share stories and have a couple of really decent chats with friends. All day there was a continuous flow of visitors, which was lovely.

Thursday I had my second and more successful attempt to go through the shed. It was a day of learning experiences for me.

1. Don't attempt to store soap in your shed; mice just loooove it

2. I own too much stuff

3. I don't need much of it.

Friday I picked up Pam and my friend Jaffa and we headed to Dalmeny for a brief break. An evening of nibblies and marshmallows by the fire was just right. Adrian and Shelley joined us later in the night so we ended up with quite a happy little party.

Saturday morning we had to head back relatively quickly for the concert. It was fun playing with Concordia again, although we were a bit rusty on some pieces, others just fell into place.

Saturday night was dinner at a Turkish restaurant with 40 of my dearest friends. Sunday lunch was a barbequeue with the family and then dinner with my friends Penny and Marc.

Monday was a revisit to the doctors, a shopping trip to get groceries and watching Harry Potter. That night I got together with Concordia again for a last tootle before Adrian picked me up on Tuesday morning to return to Sydney. Dinner at an Indian restaurant called "Kwality Curries", which, despite the name, provides some great food. Their menu always gives me a laugh because it lists as one of the ingredients in a dish "desecrated coconut".

Wednesday morning gave me a brief opportunity to go to the shops to buy a pair of shoes more suitable for medieval events, and then it was time to go to the Airport and bid farewell to Australia once more. I got a bit of a shock at the airport when I found out that excess baggage is not $13 a kilo as my father had told me, but $30! With a 15 kilo excess, that is a nasty shock.

Perhaps it was my butterfly luggage that saved the day, I don't know. But the lovely man at the counter took pity on me and charged me for only 5 kilos.

The flight back home was nasty as expected. I was infuriated by seeing one particularly obnoxious man end up having a whole row to himself because the two women that flew next to him on the NZ to Australia leg refused to sit beside him again. Frustrating to see obnoxious behaviour rewarded, and he continued to be a pain to everyone around him.

I arrived in Zurich and picked up the hire car, and met up with Sarah. She was very laid back about our plans so I suggested we head north towards Austria, as I haven't been in that direction. Once we figured out that St Gallen was in that direction we were both sold; both keen to check out the textiles museum.

The town of St Gallen is very cute... its merchanting history is revealed through these great carved windows

The textile museum was lovely. It was probably a fortunate thing that only the first floor was open, or we could have spent a loooong time there. We whiled away a happy hour in the library.

Back on the road again we travelled to St Margrethen; Sarah has a bit of a soft spot for St Margaret, so we just had to investigate. We did find a very attractive church. We almost ended up in Austria!

Onwards ever onwards, heading to Arbon. Now I have to tell you, Swiss buildings get cuter and cuter as you head north. At this tip of the country, buildings have shutters painted with curlicues and pictures, and many seem to date to the mid 16th century. Check out some of them:

these are from a little town whose name we didn't know, but we just had to stop and photograph them! We arrived in Arbon, and decided it was lovely and that the hotel was irresistable: (the stained glass windows are from in the dining room)