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Monday, November 7 to Wednesday, November 9
Andy met me at the train station in Basel and we joined Andy's friend Nick at a pub for a drink. Nick left his wife and kid back in Birmingham, England to work in Switzerland. Like Andy, who is from Germany, Nick likes living in Switzerland better than in their native countries. They admire the swiss government and like the job opportunities there. They point out how you really don't need a car, since you can travel easily throughout the country using trains and trams. We took a tram to Andy's apartment where I met his wife, Sylvia, who is expecting their first child in February.
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On Tuesday, I showed Sylvia some photos and then she took me on a walking tour of Basel. Again, we took trams to get to and from the town center. It was very cold for me, but a lunch of sausage and potatoes au gratin warmed me up. We checked the internet for train schedules and prices for the trip from Basel to Munich, which were going for 57 or 65 euros (I don't know the reason for the price difference because the trip duration were only slightly different). For dinner Sylvia had a prior engagement, but Andy, Nick, and I took the train to another town to have dinner with Irina, another friend of Andy's.
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On Wednesday, I checked my e-mail to see if there was any word on a job interview I had a week before the trip. I found out they wanted me to come in for another interview. I left the apartment and walked through the cold rain to the train station. I found out that the train I expected to take didn't stop at the station my friend was expecting to pick me up at. So, the clerk showed me a choice of trains and I chose one that cost only 36 euros; it hadn't showed up in our internet check the day before. I went to the phone to call my friend about the change in plans, but my old swiss phone card had apparently expired.
I walked down the hallway passing through customs because this was the "German" train station and all the trains went into Germany. Switzerland is not a part of the European Union and therefore you are still subject to passport checks and customs inspections unlike traveling between countries of the EU. Once on the train, a man let me use his phone to call my friend in Munich, but I realized I had left my phone list at the telephone in the station. With eight minutes till the train was to leave, I ran back through customs (wazing at the officers as I went by), back to the station and retrieved the phone list, then ran back through the customs again (now eliciting a a chuckle from the officers) and reboarded the train. I called Frank, my Munich friend, and updated him on my status.
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I changed trains twice, once with the just 5 minutes between arrival and departure times (the tracks were adjacent which made it quite easy). Lunch was a delicious sandwich and pastry, I bought at one of the train stations. I arrived in Munich in the early evening.
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