We had a very busy weekend at the end of August. No August Bank Holiday over here, so we had to fit it all into the regular weekend! Luckily, the good citizens of Basel helped us out by having a festival all weekend, combined with something called Sportnacht on the Saturday. All good fun.
Caipirinhas and Samba bands
On the Friday we went out to eat. Mexican at La Fonda. Excellent Burrito. So good, in fact, that we went there again on Tuesday. I think Mexican is my favourite style of food, at least until the next time I have Tapas! Fortified with grub, we headed for the festival. Lots of "lookie-lookie" stalls selling various ethnic bits and a gazillion outdoor bars. We wandered for a bit until we saw a big press of people and heard some live Brazilian music, ducked inside to get out of the rain and stayed for ages! Caipirinhas were a monumental 15CHF but very nice (read: strong), and you did get to keep your Klosterbergfest plastic beaker at the end of it.
This Klosterbergfest seems to be an annual charity event, full of all kinds of ethnic stalls and activities and the streets are thronging with people and music is in the air. Kind of like a very small Notting Hill carnival.
Sportnacht - Powerisers and Salsa
On Saturday from about 1700, Basel (or at least the bits of Basel that weren't Fest-ing) became overrun with various stalls set up by sporting organisations. Sportnacht. For 20CHF (although we got it for half-price from Claire's work) you get a wristband which entitles you to free transport around Basel (worth the money just for that) and allows you to try all these sports. I really fancied the bobsleigh but it seemed to be overrun by kids, and the unicycling ("einradfahre") but we didn't quite get around to it once I saw the Powerisers. I can't describe them, so above is a picture. They are very very cool. But Claire didn't get on with them too well. We had to queue for a hour in the rain to get a go but boy was it worth it!
Having done what I wanted to do, we next had to do what Claire wanted - a Salsa lesson. The fact that it was conducted in German didn't faze us one little bit and we were soon "ein, zwei, drei ... funf, sechs, sieben"-ing, twirling and generally getting a thoroughly good work-out. Much more enjoyable than I expected, and I'm pretty sure we'll be signing up for some lessons.
Salsa over, we headed back to the fest and got us some Paella and Sangria for dinner. Very nice! Massive prawns. Satruday evening was much nicer than Friday weather-wise, so there was much more going on. The was an African drum crew with dancers that we watched for a long time before heading into a little bit of Morocco, set up by the Marrakech restaurant. We had some very nice Maroccan tea - a bit of tea, a bit of mint, and a wasserpfeife, which was far more expensive than in Egypt or Turkey but very nice. Detemined to make the most of the pipe, we stayed there for quite a while and to be honest, by the time we left, intending to head for the Samba tent again, we were knackered and so just headed home instead.
Titisee!
On sunday we had a look at google maps for the black forest and I decided that we just had to go to a place called Titisee, for obvious reasons. We had some fun and games trying to get on the right road out of Basel but once we did it was plain sailing the whole way. The place was absolutely rammed with tourists and tut shops but it was very pleasant and we drove home on a German motorway (oh yeah, gotta love those German motorways!), at one point overtaking a big convoy of campervans which, we eventually noticed, all had these big stickers on them, saying they were part of a convoy that had gone Paris - Peking - Paris!! That's a lot of petrol!
Pretty shattered at the end of such an action-packed weekend. I think we might be taking it a bit easier next weekend...
Bibliophile
On a completely unrelated note; because I'd been doing so much typing this week brining the blog up to date, I was in a writing frame of mind so I've finally started actually typing my book! Still not much there, but it feels really good to have got started!
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