Installment #1 Sunday, June 24th, 2012
According to my iPad with cracked glass, it is 3AM in Basel, Switzerland, where we're headed. Today has been long, and it will be longer yet. Leaving JFK as the sun sets, we will see sunrise in just a couple of hours. Compressed Time Travel.
We're on a British Airways 747. Takeoff was delayed due to a malfunctioning air conditioning system, and it isn't much more comfortable in here now than it was when we got on, though the AC is running. Maybe high altitude will help.
Hopefully our bus trip to JFK was not an Omen of how the trip will go. Pediddleville Law, being similar to Murphy's Law, may be at hand here, but hopefully not. Our group had chartered a school bus, which arrived twenty minutes late for the first dose of anxiety. The driver never drove over fifty miles an hour all the way down I-95 from our starting point in Deep River, Connecticut. She stayed mostly in the right lane, and even at this slow speed, certain driving behaviors that might be considered "reckless" or "clueless" were observed. She kept veering into the rumble strips on the side of the road. To pass the time and keep our mind off the heat, John, another father of a band member, and I were keeping a running tally of these variances. If the rumbling lasted more than three seconds we often gave her two, three, or five points. Then she grazed a Jersey barrier-20 points! Damaged her side mirror on a toll booth-25 points! She even asked if we, the passengers, knew the right way to JFK! Emily, the teenaged Drum Major whipped out her iPhone and saved the day.
Getting cooler, just barely now, and everyone is settling in to movies and reading or sleeping, and oddly I think I smell pizza. My son Owen has the window seat and is assigned UFO Vigil, but he's playing a game on his iPod. Sunlight dark red on the horizon. Soon we'll be in outer space and our truncated, but endless-feeling night will ensue. Maybe I'll sleep.
Installment #2 Monday, June 25th, 2012
10:25 Greenwich Mean Time. Stuck at Heathrow Airport for six hours awaiting a rescheduled flight to Basel. As mentioned earlier, our flight from JFK was delayed for a malfunctioning air conditioner, then was delayed further after we boarded, simmering in our own juices, because of an unruly child who would not put on his seat belt. His mother seemed unconcerned about this, or seemed to disbelieve that it was possible to belt him in, and so is now despised because we missed our connecting flight...
Installment #3 Tuesday, June 26th, 2012
Jet Lag plus C-Pap withdrawal makes for a hard night sleeping in a strange bed in Switzerland. It would seem impossible that I could not sleep last night, but it sure did happen. Actually I did sleep some--I know this because I remember dreaming about my job. I'm an idiot even in my subconscious!
Earlier last night some of us went out to get a get a bite to eat and get a feel for the city. We went to a falafel shop called Sam's Take-Away and ate at tables out on the sidewalk. In my jet-lagged state and with a Feldeschlosschen in me, I remember looking at a passing tram at Claraplatz and thinking to myself "Already I know I love it here." Owen is really enjoying it too, noticing the differences between here and Pediddleville.
Today we went with most of the group to walk along the Rhine and go to the spot where you can stand in Switzerland, Germany, and France simultaneously. We then walked into Germany proper, and then crossed the Rhine on a footbridge into France. Owen was feeling the pain of his ailment, so we left the group to have their lunch in France. We caught a tram back to our hotel on Klingentalstrasse and went back to that take-away for our lunch. Tonight we go to a welcome party barbeque outside the city at an old castle, which I'm sure will be a blast of beer and fife and drum jamming.
Installment #4 Wednesday, June 27th, 2012
Today toured the Roman ruins at Augusta Raurica outside Basel. The kids seemed to want to just hang out together at the top of the colosseum for a while, and taking a cue from the obvious feeling of safety here, and knowing that most of them were good kids, responsible and smart, most of the parents went about sightseeing on their own or in small groups. I got a little taste of a feeling I experienced once before, also in Europe years ago when I was traveling on the coast of Wales. It was an exhilarating peak experience of realizing that nobody in the world who knew me, nor anybody who didn't, had any idea where in the world I was. I may tell that story some other time, but not now. Today was more of a remembrance of that, since there actually were many people close by who would be able to find me if they wanted to. I was walking along a walkway through a barley field, here and there picking it and eating the raw grains on the way out to see the amphitheater--the place where gladiator fights had been held, when I had that feeling.
After that Owen and I had lunch together-Wienerschnitzel-then met up with others in the group. In a beautiful island park in the Rhine, we waded in it briefly, then boarded a river tour boat that took us North-downstream, through two locks, back to Basel. The kids got a kick out of seeing the nude river bathers and people floating downstream in the strong current. We saw nesting storks and Rhineland vineyards, and every hundred feet or so these small fishing shacks, each with a swinging boom and a net for trawling the swift current.
Had dinner in a great Pan-Asian restaurant that was reasonably priced, then later hung out drinking beer in the park across the street from the hotel. Let's put it this way--in New Haven or New York City, just about everything we saw going on in that park would have drawn the Police, but it was a perfectly peaceful, safe scene. I'm now having a hard time coping with how BACKWARDS the U.S. is, if you can believe that. No crime here. Why? Because if you do the crime, you do the time. For all offenses there are set penalties. The people know this, and don't break the law. They all behave like reasonable human beings. Justice has nothing to do with how good or how well-paid your lawyer is in Switzerland. Another example of this is that tipping is not expected, though much appreciated, so you don't have wait staff brown-nosing you for a good tip. It's better this way, believe me.
Installment #5 Thursday, June 28th, 2012
Night before last I finally got a good night's sleep. Last night back to the same insomnia, interspersed with dreams about work again! Seriously, what is wrong with this picture? I barely got through my last few days at my job before vacation without going "postal", and here I am dreaming about it, when the sleep I AM getting needs to be restorative...
Italy won against Germany last night and the city was wild with cheers and car horns, and oddly, a man singing in Arabic through a bullhorn.
Yesterday, halfway through our time here we hit kind of a snag-and our first grievance with the Swiss-their supposed propensity to rip off tourists. The Junior Corps and several others were to appear at what was called a "welcome party" as guests of the Muster organizers and as entertainment. We were led to believe, or were not told that it was otherwise, that the meal was complimentary, but then found out that it would be eighteen francs for their meal of all-you-can-eat pasta! Beer was pretty steep, too, at 6.50. All the corps bagged out of it, leaving early, causing a row of back and forth umbrage.
We ended up getting pizzas and drinks and having a get-together in the park, then went swimming in the Rhine.
Installment #6 Monday, July 2nd, 2012
Lots has been happening. Two musters, in Basel and Liestal, a suburb of Basel. The history of Swiss Fife and Drum Corps musters begins in Deep River, Connecticut, where Owen's corps hails from. Each year the Deep River Junior Ancient Fife And Drum Corps hosts the Deep River Muster. This type of music originated in Switzerland, was adopted by Colonial America, then took on a life of it's own. Years ago some Swiss groups came over to Deep River and got the idea to do musters in their homeland. These kids have been revered like heroes here, except for one little misunderstanding referred to in my last installment, that was really the fault of our travel agent/tour director. All hatchets have been buried by now, no international incident has occurred, and the corps ROCKED the muster in Liestal. A giant tent full of beer-drinking Swiss and German people singing along with them two nights ago was a very proud moment!
Tonight we go to a farewell party.
Another thing that has happened quite a bit since the last installment has been the swimming in the Rhine River. I say swimming, but mostly it's drifting. The Rhine at Basel is a swift-moving, deep river, full of clean water straight out of the Alps. Giant shipping barges and tour boats are often seen on it, and Baselers enjoy riding its current for hundreds of meters or even kilometers. If you try to swim upstream, it's like one of those exercise pools where you swim and swim and stay in the same place. There has been some very warm weather, and the late sundown here has made for some great end-of-day get-togethers to cool off, mingling with the locals, who sit on the bank drinking and smoking hookahs. I picked a few choice stones from the bottom for the fish tank at home.
It'll be hard to leave here, but there IS Salmon River...
