We're back, now with even more EuroFadok!

Wow!  It has been 10 months since our last post.  How time flies when you are having fun and brewing a bun in the oven.  That's right, V is now almost 7 months pregnant and our excitement grows by the day!  Even though our baby may never be president, he/she will at least have already traveled more than most people.  Obviously, a lot has happened in the last 10 months, but we have attempted to boil it down to this collection of photos (and one movie).

At the end of June, 2010, we had a visit from our good friends, Becky and Jake.  While they were here, we took a little trip to Munich.  We had a great time there, including a night at the schnapps bar and a visit to all the touristy sights, including several beautiful beer gardens.  We also went to Dachau, which was a sad, but important experience.  On the way back, we learned that regional trains sometimes split and go to entirely different places.  A costly but valuable lesson learned.

Becky and Jake convinced Jon to try planking.

On our walking tour through the beautiful old town of Munich, and yes that is Austin in the background. He was very welcomed throughout the city. Traveling with your dog is quite easy throughout Europe.

Big Beer and Big Pretzels = YUM!

In late July and early August, we had an epic adventure in China and Thailand with our good friend Jay, who had just finished a stint teaching English at a Chinese university.  There are too many events to list right now but we did take a 26-hour train ride through half of southern China with some of Jay's dear friends.  In Thailand we completed a three-day trek in the north and had lots of relaxing beach and sun time on the southern islands.

We rented some bikes in China and had fun riding around.  We encountered some friendly young folks on the way who were riding around, advertising for a local computer store.  This photo encapsulates the excitement and curiosity the Chinese people show towards visitors.

Our friend Jay was a local celebrity!

Another pic from our bike ride.

Here we are after having lunch at the college cafeteria.  Jay was the most popular teacher among his students.

We rode elephants as part of our trek through the northern hills in Thailand

Oh lovely lazy summer days on the beaches of Thailand and long-tail boat rides! 

 

In September, Jay came to stay with us in Basel for a little bit.  We had fun just hanging out, swimming and having BBQs on the Rhein.

Austin and his "Hey buddy" Jay

In October, we took another trip back to the States, this time for Jon's brother Brett's wedding.  The trip was a surprise to Jon's whole family, the only one who knew was the bride-to-be, Natasha!  It was too short of a trip, but it was still great to see everyone and live the life of excess in Vegas.

The happy family, post-wedding ceremony.

One of the fringe benefits of a Vegas wedding is guest appearances by Spiderman!

A couple of weeks after the wedding, this happened:

Translation: "Here comes Baby EuroFadok"

In November, we had a visit from our very good friends Lynn and Cristin.  Then, we all met up with even more friends in Portugal for our annual get-together (the 12th annual Labor Day bash).

Here we are with Lynnie at the Fasnacht fountain in Basel.  

Jon is having good times stuffing CC into the trunk of a car.

Our big communal dinner in southern Portugal.  It was fresh, authentic and amazingly delicious.  The place came recommended by our Portuguese friend Joao.

Here are the EuroFadoks along the southern coast of Portugal.   You can't tell, but baby EuroFadok is just starting to brew in this photo!

Our camera was broken for most of December, so we don't have many photos from that month.  We did receive visits from our friends Dan and Trevor.  Jon's birthday cake was made entirely out of gummis this year, which brought him much joy.  We officially are chastising Dan for not posting his pictures of his visit, like he promised!

Ringing in the New Year in Basel

In January, we went on a snowy adventure in the Alps with the lab.

Jon hates downhill skiing, and it is not recommended for pregnant ladies, so we went sledding instead.  Fun!!

In February, we survived another crazy season of pre-Lent activities.  Every town and village has their own celebration, and the last one is always Fasnacht in Basel.

We went to Bad Bellingen for a crazy fire festival.  You hang out near Mordor and light pieces of wood on fire.  Then you slam them against slanted planks and watch them fly off into the valley below.  Safe!  

Here is a short movie, illustrating what happens at Morgenstreich, the beginning of Fasnacht.  The power goes out exactly at 4 AM, and the piping and drums start.

 

After 3 straight days of revelry, the town looks like this:

Jon and our good friend Eli, who is kind enough to watch Austin quite often.

In March, we took a Babymoon to Greece.  We visited Athens and the island of Santorini.  

The Acropolis with a view of the Parthenon. 

The happy EuroFadoks after a 4-hour hike on Santorini.

In March, our good friend Dustin came back to Basel (his first visit was in February 2011) and became the first repeat visitor to Chateau Fadok.  Together, we went to visit Trevor in Madrid, where he is teaching social studies.

Yep, this happened.

The happy couple in Toledo, Spain. (Now you can see the Baby Fadok bump.)

Finally, Dustin and the EuroFadoks attended the Men's World Curling Championships, which were hosted in Basel this year!  Jon and Dustin had curled together for 5 years in Seattle, and V was a frequent participant in some of the crazy curling tournaments at the club there.  During the Championships, we were able to get the captain of the Canadian men's team to sign a onesie for our friends Phil and Kristina, who just had a baby boy!  P.S. Jon may have had to push some adolescents out of the way to obtain said autograph. He was the only adult getting autographs.

Jon, D, and Pucky the curling stone.

Whew!  Time really does fly when you are having fun.  We can't promise to keep on top of this blog thing, but we will try to post more than once a year.  We hope everyone is well.  Drop a line or post a comment, we would love to hear from you!!

As usual, there are many more photos to see on V's Flickr account. Here's some links:

 Munich

China

Thailand

Brett & Tasha's Wedding

Greece

Madrid

Love, hugs, and kisses,

The EuroFadoks (V, Jon, Aussie, and TotesTroubsTomato)

A day trip to the Schwarzwald with Phil and Kristina

 Greetings from abroad!  Wow, what a fun weekend it has been!  We started it off Friday evening with a top-floor Happy Hour and BBQ at the institute, featuring fresh beer on tap from the local brewery, Unser Bier.  Here is their website for more info: Unser Bier brewery.

Then on Saturday morning (ahem...morning being just before noon) we rode our bikes across the French border to Saint Loius to enjoy their Saturday outdoor market.  Lots of fresh produce, meats, cheeses and yes, of course, baguettes and other delicious breads are available.  Unfortunately for us, we got there right before closing so there were no more rotisserie chickens or baguettes left.  Fiddlesticks!!  Oh well, it is only a 15 minute bike ride so we will just have to go again.  We also hit up our new favorite cheese store and brought back some delicious soft cheese and some fabulous  Sauvignon Blanc.

Later in the day we popped on into ArtBasel, the world's largest contemporary art festival.  Neato mosquito!  If you like art, or crazy crap glued together, or crazy crap glued together and called art, this is your place to be!  We bought the discounted tickets which allowed us to explore for the last two hours of the day.  This was nowhere near enough time, but it was enough to get a taste of what there is to see.  Next year, we will bring the camera and share the weird art with you!

Then we finished off the day with some drinks on the Rhein (we saw a double rainbow!) and then we finished the night with friends at Hirsheneck, which is a fantastic restaurant collective and punk rock club.  Coincidentally they are very dog friendly, so Austin got to enjoy the night out with us.

We don't have any picture from this weekend, but we know that's what you come here for, so below are some pictures from Phil and Kristina's visit in mid-May.


We bought a day pass on the train to the Black Forest region in Germany, which only costs about 30 Euros for up to five people!  On the way to Staufen we missed our connection, so we just wandered around to kill an hour until the next train.  We ran across this collection of lazy sheep that were comically baa-ing away.  It seriously sounded like a drunk, fat guy pretending to be a sheep.

 

 Here is the castle on top of the hill near Staufen, we were too lazy to climb up there.  You can see below the castle many grape vines.  The region in and around Staufen is known for their local wines.  Holy monkey!  We tried several at the bottling cooperative and were blown away by the taste and value!

 After exploring Staufen for a half day, we headed into Freiburg for some sights, food and beer.  Freiburg is a cool university town and the centerpiece of the city is the hugemongous church.  One of the gargoyles is a guy with his pants down and the drain pipe is well-placed, to say the least.

Way back in the day, local government officials would carve the official dimensions of goods into the walls of the church so that customers wouldn't get ripped off.  This was the official dimensions of some kind of bucket (it was probably for beer).

Apparently goiters were a problem back in the day as well.

 

We finished our tour of Freiburg with some beer and local grub at a college pub.  It was a really nice day and we look forward to heading back to the Schwarzwald sometime soon.

Hope you enjoyed our little update, keep the peace and come see us real soon, ya hear?  We have also posted some recent photos on our Flickr account, if you want to peruse our happenings:

EuroFadok photos

P.S. We are training Austin to be a shelf.  It's going pretty well so far.

We're back!

Wow, four months has gone by without an update?  Seems unbelievable, but perhaps the old saying is true; time flies when you are having fun!  We have so much to catch up on since we last posted.  Our friend Dustin came to visit us in February and he was our first visitor from back home.  While he was here, we traveled to Luzern, the Alps, and Sorrento, Italy, all of which were amazing adventures.  After D left town, we moved into our very own place!  We found a great place only a two-minute walk from the Rhein and a 10 minute walk to the institute.  We are really liking our new pad and we hope to never have to move again while we are here!  Just after moving in to the new apartment, we made our first trip back to the States.  It was a whirlwind adventure filled with friends and family, a wedding for V's sister Elaine, and a graduation party for Jon's sister Ashley.  We brought two empty suitcases with us and filled them with inexpensive American merchandise.  On the flight back to Basel, we realized how much we had missed it.  Eight months in and this place is really starting to feel like home. 

After getting back to Basel, we finished settling in to the new flat and prepared ourselves for our second set of visitors, Phil and Kristina!  We had a great long weekend with them, including a day trip to the southern edge of the Schwarzwald (Black Forest).  That pretty much summarizes the last four months of our life in a nutshell.  There will be many more posts to come about some of these events, and there will be a lot more pictures, as we know that is what is juiciest about this blog.  For now, we shall placate you with last weekend's bicycle ride through the Alsace region, just across the French border from here.

Here is a link to some info on the Alsace region, in case you are interested.  It was historically a Germanic region, but it has remained a part of France for the last few centuries.  

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alsace

We set out with our Austrian friend Elizabeth, who is a cycling enthusiast to the max!

The intent of our bike ride was to reach an annual market in the Alsace, where we would buy much local cheese and wine.  It turns out however, that the word for market in French is the same as for march (i.e. parade), you just need to know about the accent.  Whoops!  It was pretty hilarious though, and we ended up just riding to St. Loius, where we had a nice lunch at a cafe, and then went to a fromagerie, where we proceeded to buy five different types of stinky cheese and some really good wine too.

The beautiful Alsace region.

On the road again! It felt so good to be back touring on bikes again!  Our good friends Phillip and Katrin lent Jon a bicycle to use (Dustin was kind enough to bring V's over on the plane!) and we are hoping to have many more cycling adventures.

And this is how we spend a lot of our time now:

We love living by the river!  V bought Jon a BBQ for our 5th anniversary, so now we can even cook down by the river too!

Well, sorry it took so long to get back to this blogging thing, but we are going to try and be better about it again.  We hope this post finds all of you well and happy, you can rest assured that we are!

Mit Liebe,

Die EuroFadoks

Planets, goats, sheep and an airplane crash

Ahhh...here we sit sipping on wine after a wonderful tomato pesto and fettuccine dinner with green beans on the side.  All of this luxury is well-deserved as we completed over 13km of hiking today.  We took the train out to Laufen and followed the Planetenweg all the way out to Liesberg.  This was probably the most challenging hike we have done so far as the majority of it seemed to be uphill.

This is what one is commonly faced with when getting off the train to start hiking.  Switzerland has the most amazing system of hiking trails we have ever seen.  We haven't tested it yet, but we think it is possible to hike all the way from Basel to the Alps and then through the Alps on their trail system which is complete with cabins and yurts.  The signs tell you which direction to go and how long it will take to get there.  These times are based on Swiss averages, so be prepared to work hard if you want to meet those times!  As a side note, check out the jazzy going-down-the-stairs guy on the blue sign.

Here is the start of the Planetenweg (Planet Trail).  The trail is an approximately to-scale model of our solar system at a 1:1,000,000,000 scale.  As you can see, it was a gorgeous day in the region, with temps above 10 Celsius.

You follow the trail and each of the planets is placed in its location at the appropriate distance from the sun.  It was a great lesson in perspective as we encountered the first four planets in only a short time, but it took over 3 hours of hiking to get to Neptune!  Here is V with the planet Venus, which is populated by tough-skinned monsters, aka women.  One of V's many nicknames from Jon is Venus, coincidentally.

Giant Jon get hungry.  Earth is SNACK!!

Here, Jon is pretending to be sad because he has just stepped into a giant pile of cow shit (note where he is pointing).  V knows that he is really sad because the 'man' planet is not as cool as Venus.  Austin is so happy here because in about 5 minutes, he is going to roll in a bunch of poop.

After applying a fresh layer of poopy to his coat, Austin was really into walking on these felled trees.  We call this photo 'Log on logs'.

All that rolling in manure and running on logs makes Austin thirsty for fresh spring water straight from the tap.

Somebody stole Saturn's rings!  Must have been Uranus!

We caught these goats spying on us.  Every time we looked their way, however, they looked ahead as if nothing was going on.  Then if we looked away, we could see them staring at us in our peripheral vision.  Silly goats!  Where are your boats?

These black sheep were also mesmerized by us.  Then even started following us for a little bit.

Ha-ha!  I caught V touching Uranus.

These chaps were out in the fields flying their model airplane.

Up, up, and away!!!!

And SPLAT!!  After about one minute of flying, the plane's engine died and it took a nose dive straight into the ground and shattered into pieces with a loud "THUD".  About 10 seconds before that, Jon had declared "Oh, it looks like they are doing tricks."  Turns out they had just lost control of the plane.

Where did Pluto go?  Perhaps after those jerk scientists stripped him of his planet title, he climbed aboard the model airplane and performed a kamikaze mission?  Or is he hiding behind Uranus?

Off to the left of this photo is Liesberg, the town in which we finished the hike.

What a beautiful day to enjoy an exhausting hike!  The three of us were filthy and smelly at the end of it.  It seemed as if half of the people on the train back had also been outdoors, so we weren't too out of place.  In fact we are starting to feel less and less "out of place" and more like we found a nice little place to call "home" for awhile. The rest of the pictures are in the Flikr set here:
Planet Hike

 Now, we have to finish this here wine.


Ciao!
Die EuroFadoks