Day 1 Real Christmas Trees

 Taking the Christmas decorations off our pine Christmas tree on Boxing Day seemed like a very harsh thing to do.Traditionally our tree stays up at least until the New Year or at best until the 6^th January but this year Wendy took down the decorations and Richard sawed the tree up for firewood early, in preparation for our Cold Play adventure to begin on December 27^th. We left Sydney at on time at 6.50pm and flew to Zurich via Singapore , the second leg, which was on an A-380 was rather pleasant.

We arrived in Zurich around 7.30 am and quickly and easily found our way through customs and across the road to the railway station on route to visit some friends who live in Basel. After a short delay buying a ticket we ran to the platform to catch the 8.04 train to Basel which amazingly was running a couple of minutes late (Swiss trains are never late) allowing us to be the last passengers on board before the doors closed. Of course somewhere in that process we retrieved our coats and beanies from our bags, as the temperature on arrival was a cool -5 degrees.

What followed was a 90-minute train ride through an absolute winter wonderland. After leaving Sydney with its green pine Christmas trees in pots, or worse green plastic pine trees in pots, or even worse still green plastic pine trees in pots with fake white snow painted on the branches, we were greeted on our journey from Zurich to Basel with majestic pine trees and whole forests blanketed in white snow. To the locals the snow is an inconvenience, which makes transport and getting around a little difficult. For us as visitors we could only see the beauty in the snow-covered trees, houses, cars, roads and footpaths.

Our first day was not wasted as we spent time catching up with our friends, Roger and Elizabeth with whom we enjoyed lunch in a cafeteria, where you are charged for you meal by the weight of your plate, followed by a wonderful mid afternoon walk in the snow through one of Basel’s most beautiful parks while the snow continued to fall all around us. In spite of the dark falling at about 4.30pm, we caught a bus to town and began to check out the sights of Basel before returning for a cheese fondue for dinner (so wonderfully Swiss).