It has been the nicest day weather-wise today, the weather forcast has it as a nice sunny 27 degrees, and I am choosing to spend the morning of it in the basement of an internet cafe. This first blog would have been with you yesterday but after 40 minutes of tracking down an internet cafe I discovered that it had been burnt down in a fire. There was a sign in the window giving helpful directions to the closest laundrette. By the time I had found the place I am currently sitting in, it had closed.

We flew into Basel, Switzerland and after a minor argument with a ticket machine got a bus into the centre. We had unknowingly arrived in Basel during some kind of arts festival and the only hotel we could find that was semi-affordable was an Ibis by the station. We wheeled our trendy luggage to the hotel and figured out what we were going to do with our 1.5 day Switzerland visit.

Before reading on it is important you clear your mind of any preconceptions of Switzerland that you may have; Swiss Army Knives, Cuckoo Clocks, expense, Roger Federer. I drew the curtains of our room to reveal the view of the opposite building, a tram station and a Swiss Army Knife shop. We took a tram from the aforementioned tram station and got off in the centre for a wander. Basel is situated on the Rhine and seemed to be made up primarily of two squares consiting of a mix of fairytail pointy buildings with tiled rooves and more modern blocks of cement with windows. After familiarising ourselves with the town a little we walked passed a poster of Federer advertising some watches and went and had an expensive but nice meal in a restaurant overlooking one of the squares.

The next day we had three Museums on our agenda, Basel seems to have a lot of museums and we chose to go and have a look at the three that interested us most; Museum Tinguely, The Puppenhausmuseum and the Cartoonmuseum. The Tinguely was a museum that I had been looking very much forward to visiting and consisted of the works of a man called Mr Something Tinguely. He was from Basel and was famed for his mechanical sculpture. The Museum did not dissapoint and was full of moving mechanical wonders made up of mostly junk with the odd sheep skull thrown in for good measure. Mr Tinguely also had some of his work  displayed in a fountain in the centre of town. I took a video of this fountain which I will try and insert into the blog, but I feel that the internet cafe may not let me do this. If there is no video it means I have failed in this aim.

Mechanical Stuff.

This was my first attempt at uploading an iPhone video, I´m sure there is a way to stop the proportions being silly but I cant, figure it out in German. See if you can spot Heather.

I think I have misremembered the order we did the museums in. I think I thought we had gone to the mechanical museum first because it was my favourite but actually I think we went to the Puppenhausmuseum or Dollshouse Museum first. This museum was also entertaining but lacked mechanical sculpture. It was divided into 4 floors I think of teddy bears, dolls houses, and a special display of a strange Swiss mountain tradition of dressing up like a nutter with a complicated farm related diarama balanced on your head and massive bells hung off yourself. A photo will explain better. I also took photos of what I thought were the scariest of the teddy bears.

I guess I should be setting the atmosphere a little more. It was a cloudy day, quite cool with a light sprinkling of rain. Now that's done i will continue. Before the third museum we went to find some lunch. I discovered an awesome looking food court where you could pick your dish and have it heated up. For takeaway portions of beef stew and some chicken thing it came to around £40 or the swiss equivalent. Heather was not all too happy with my choice.

Again I may have screwed up the order of proceedings, we may have gone and seen the last museum before lunch but it does not matter much anyway as the Cartoon Museum was a bit of a dead loss. It was taken over with one guys comic strips, this one guy seemed to like drawing penises a lot and obese naked women, he then liked to sprinkle a mild racist theme throughout his comics. They were also all in German. Two out of three museums being good is a result though.

Around 6pm we caught a 45minute train to Freiburg, where we are right now. Feiburg is a walled city, or was a walled city. Inside the wall the city is lovely and picturesque but outside it could be the suberbs of any city. What is most noticeable is the lack of cars and the majority of streets are pedestrianised. Trams jingle through the town and all the streets and pavements are cobbled. Down the sides of the majority of streets run little gutter type canals carrying water. These are called Bächle and date back many hundreds of years and were originally for supplying water to the town but now are just for show. If you accidently step in one it is said that you will marry a Freiburger.

If you look carefullly you can see the gutter things.

We did our usual introduction to a town and went for a wonder. Freiburg is full of interesting little shops including one that sells a selection of minature Sterling engines. Frieburg is known as the gateway to the Black Forest, and on our first day we wondered up a hill covered in forest to look over the city. Not sure if it was actually part of the Black forest though. In the evening we ducked into a late opening icecream bar to get out of the rain that had started and shared Black Forest Icecream.

The next day, with the help of a friendly local we got a tram out into the country. The landscape is the landscape that inspired The Brothers Grimm's fairytails was made up of bright green valleys lined with forest covered hills. We swapped our tram for a bus and went further in to the forrest. Our destination: a cable car up to to the top of what seemed to be the highest peak in the immediate area.  Having known we were going up a mountain to walk down we decided it would be best to dress inappropriatley, I wore shores and a shirt and Heather a skirt and a shirt. When we were at the top it began to lightley rain and was cold. The views were amaying though and as soon as we started walking we warmed up, especially after the uphill stretch after we backtracked to find the correct path. We would our way down the mountain through dense forest, through fields of horses and cattle and and through little clusters of cottages that you expected larger-than-life cuckoos to pop out of. It would have all been rather ideal if it wan't raining. (random fact: turns out Cuckoo clocks are not actually from Swityerland but from the Black forest area of Germany, Heather will probably correct me on this in a later blog).

Close to the bottom of the hill we rewared ourselved with some hearty German food from an inn, and massive slices of cake. I of course chose the Black forest Gateaux, a cake made almost entirley of cream and cheery liqueur, sandwhiched together with fine strips of sponge. We wondered back down to the bus station and went back to Freiburg.

I cannot remember what day it was but in Freiburg we discovered a micro brewery and a new word: "Ratling" which means shandy, oops. Germany does beer and portions well. This doesn't really link in but it has to be said.

We had a lazy rest of the day, I had a snooz and then went and got lost trying to find an internet cafe whilst Heather got a bit of shopping in. We met up later and had some dinner in an indoor market place and then listened to some outdoors bands as the sun went down. Freigburgh is a lovely place, I would highly recommend it.

The next day, or today as it would turn out we are to catch a train to Strasbourg in France but Heather will tell you more of that. I am off now to find Heather to tell her I need some more time to put the photos and the video in.