Was fuer ein Zufall! (What are the odds?)
Trip Start
Aug 23, 2005
1
10
15
Trip End
Aug 2006
Basel, Switzerland
Saturday, November 26, 2005
We had about an hour to kill before the plays began, so we went into a cafe and warmed up with some expensive (about 5 Can. dollars a cup), but not so tasty hot chocolate. Well, it was better than wandering around outside in the cold.
The performance itself was indeed unlike anything I had ever witnessed before. A small group of about 20 people crammed into a storage room in the Basel Theater, from which even smaller groups of about four people were extracted. In these small groups, we were taken throughout the lower rooms of the theatre and after spending a set amount of time there, we were directed to the next room. Swiss punctuality will come into play later, as you will see. Anyway, in each room, we were given a lecture/tour by an actor and throughout the course of the 'play', we were given an interesting outlook on what it was like to have lived in the lower parts of the theater as it had served as a place of shelter. The dry toilets, for example, were quite the invention. There were ten steps to using the dry toilet, ending with sticking the, ah, filled paper bag on a high shelf, to be taken out later with the others. Somewhat gross, but also highly amusing.
Unfortunately, we were unable to finish the play as by this point, we were already late, which meant that we had to run. We sped out of the theatre, hopped on the next tram, got off at the Hauptbahnhof and booted it to the platform, but we were a minute too late for the Swiss as the train left at 22:52 instead of 22:53 like it was supposed to. We later determined that the Swiss are ueberpunktlich (overly punctual) and the Germans are merely punktlich. Because it was so late, our options were few and far between. Wait and take the ICE (fast and naturally more expensive train) or wait and wait and wait and then take the Regionalbahn. Our theatre group leader determined that our best option (at this point, we seriously questioned his sanity, theatre man or not) would be to take the ICE without paying for it. And surprisingly enough, we did. He found a conductor, told him our sad story of just missing the train and for some odd reason, the guy believed us and we took a swift, yet eventful, ride back to Freiburg.
As we were discussing our luck at having gotten a free ride, the Deutsche Polizei came to our cabin and asked for passports. Josh's was fine because he had his student visa already. The other girl (a Canadian) did not have her passport with her as she had forgotten it. They hassled her a little bit, but after an official-sounding phone call and seeing her health card and driving licence, they let her go with a warning. I had my passport with me, but I didn't yet (and still don't) have my student visa printed inside because of paperwork that is needed from Aschaffenburg (the city in Germany in which I worked at last summer). It was a pretty tense situation because you are not supposed to be in Germany for longer than three months without a visa and I had now been in Germany for three months plus a day. Oops, I thought, but then reflected, that it was the Germans' inefficiency in the first place that had put me in this situation! Luckily they didn't throw a fuss and nothing came of it, but it was slightly tense at the time.
So, that was my somewhat bizarre Basel experience. We had a lot of luck and now we have some good stories to tell. And isn't that what travelling is about anyway?
'Til next time,
Danielle
PS. I was to Blaubeuren for a Baden-Wuerttemberg Stipendium (scholarship) 'welcome workshop', but there really isn't much to say about it except that I was disappointed. Even the food wasn't that spectacular. We were in a beautiful town with lots of stuff to see, but we were kept inside to learn about Germany's garbage system (no kidding) and different German greetings. (Ok, admittedly we did a bit more than that, like role-playing, and we got to meet some pretty cool people, but honestly, couldn't we have seen the castle ruins, too? I could see them from our meeting room, for pete's sake.) Oh well. I guess they thought that we needed this introduction to the country, though I found it painfully tedious, particularly because I believe that if you have received this stipendium and you haven't figured out the German garbage system yet (afer having lived here for at least a month now), you shouldn't be getting the stipendium. End of story and end of Blaubeuren. :)
PPS. If my English seems a bit off, great. That means that my German is improving! :D
