First Swiss gig!

I was pretty excited to play at the Opposition last Friday (Its the club we hang out at the most). It was kind of a variety night organized by our friend 'Zurri', who managed to get a lot of people to step out of the woodwork and play some music throughout the evening. Was a really good time. Looking forward to playing some more in the future!!

Alpacas.

So we were sitting around doing nothing one day. 2 laptops, a game cube, and the dog is crashed out. Like this:




And Shelly reminded me that she and Roo saw some alpacas in Lyss, actually right by our apartment. I wasnt really even sure if I knew what an alpaca was, so it was a must go. To the other side of the cookie factory we went, and sure enough....

It seems that they belong to the cookie factory, which pretty much brings the Kambly factory one whole step closer to Wonka's factory.

Shelly's Ride.

So this is how it went down.

First, Shelly and I visited her sister in Italy, and at the time were thinking out our possibilities for moving to CH. Well, while in Italy, Shelly witnessed the horror of a bike that her sister was riding around Florence. When we knew for sure that bikes would be part of our culture so when we were preparing the move Shelly put the hammer down, she wanted a new bike. She hadn't been on a bike for like 15 years so she was insistent that she have a real swell one for getting back on the pedaling circuit.

My argument was that we should first move to Europe, take a look at what all the Euros were riding around on, and buy a bike accordingly. Didnt work though, we made a nice purchase at Montgomery cyclery, and within a month of our stuff arriving are shiny new American bike was stolen.

Well the weather is turning, its gone from thermal sock temperatures to hoodie season. Time to get a bike. The idea at this point was to get a cheapie, cuz the nice ones get stolen apparently. We shopped around and basically had decided on a really cheap store model, from Migros, but we were going to wait 2 weeks for the 2009 models to come out (yeah). Just in time, we learned of a traveling used bike market that would be visiting Lyss on Saturday morning! SO... we partied like demons on Friday night, in bed about 4 or so, and then rolled out at 8:30 to get to BikeORama. Check out Shellys sweet wheels! Those are a couple of Big Macs from Mickey D's on the back, by the way.

Checking out the bikes they had, there were some newer ones that I tried to push on Shelly, but this time she wanted an old crappy bike with European character. Wouldnt have just been easier to get one of these the first time?

See us next time for ...first Bike Adventure to Aarberg !!! *spelling of Aarberg fixed 9.7.2009*

cute dog pics for tha dogg people.

Fasnacht videos.

Basler Fasnacht

Here is a cool church in Basel. Shelly is standing in front of it if you would like to blow up the image and squint.


So Shelly and I experienced a totally new holiday, which totally caught us off gaurd. Fasnacht, its a pre-Lent holiday. Seems to me its based on the classic idea of eating up the last of your winter lard supply before beginning the fast. By my observation, here is how it works: People dress up in ridiculous costumes, usually as groups, and assemble into marching bands, and march around town making a bunch of noise while we watch and drink beer. This is a German, Swiss, and Austrian specialty as I understand. Different towns/cities have their celebration at different times. We heard that there would be some kind of carnival in Lyss, and so we went to check it out, and it was a pretty crazy party. We then learned of the up and coming Fasnachts in Bern, Biel, and that the biggest one would be in Basel. So we were like, alright. lets go to Basel. (we also went to Bern, and Biel, but only briefly) I took off work last Wednesday. When I got of Tuesday we departed for Basel, arriving an hour later. We partied all night long, and caught the first train back at 5am. It was crazy.



Fasnacht in Basel begins on a Monday at 4am, when they turn all the power off in the city and everyone freaks out. Then in the pitch black, the crazy Fasnachters relight the streets with the elaborate lanterns that they prepared, which remain on display for the 3 night carnival. This one is dog themed. Snoopy, Santas Little Helper, Odie, Brian, Grommet, 101 Dalmations, Triumph the insult comic dog, and even Snoop Dogg are representin' on this bone shaped masterpiece.
I dont know about this one. I see Abe Lincoln, mickey mouse in a KKK suit, maybe some blood, hanging colored people and American colors all on a cross. Again I dont understand, I hope it is an anti-rasicm thing, cuz Im putting it on my blog.

the crowd has gathered around to catch this band. This is a zoomed in pic from far away. The one with the huge head would be the leader. So the bands in Basel are particuraly known for playing piccolos. All the other fasnachts have bands that do all the horns, and this band has a big horn arrangement. Further down youll find some videos of bands walking by, and youll hear the piccolos. I just wikipediad piccolo to check my spelling and the article mentions the 'Carnival of Basel' which we are talking about here.
band pic:

I CHOOSE BOTH!!

WWWEEEESSSTTT SSSIIIIIDDDEEEE!!!!!!!!!!!!!
band coming down the street. Oh yes, the bands are constant. Probably like 200 marching bands walking around the city, seriously.
Its getting late, the crowds are thinning, there is an inch of confetti on the ground, and my wifes hair is pink for some reason.

The Rhine river in Basel. We've come full circle and are now in Over the Rhine.

RETURN OF THE SON OF BLOG UPDATE.

So, lets go back in time to the fall when our good friends Aaron, Erica and Christian were here! They had a camera with them naturally, but like a fool I failed to get their pictures before their departure. I had to bug Aaron for a few weeks to get the photos on photobucket, saying I wanted to put them on the blog... then I never did it, which he has mentioned politely... a few times.

Thats Aaron up there in the tower. This is in Avenches, and this is part of the wall and gate from the good old Roman days. There was a big emotional breakdown later in the trip when the camera became missing for like 5 minutes. It was under the seat in the car, but Aaron thought maybe he left it up there!




Heres a cool shot of inside the tower. I bet teenagers totally make out and smoke cigarettes in here.Climbing around on and in the ruins. Allegedly some kids found a statue of some Roman dude stashed in a sewer-ish structure in these ruins. That was maybe 60 years ago or something, which in the grand scheme of things is very recent. So now the bust of Roman Guy so-and-so the Fourth is in a museum.
Us again acting out cliche battle scenes in the old theatre.
Hangin out! Pillars are cool. A little plaque illustrates that these pillars once belonged to a big building that would take up the whole photo, and then some, if it was still around.
So we went to Montreux. This group is 4/5ths music nerd (Shelly tolerates a lot). Ever hear the song Smoke on the Water? Its about this casino burning down as a result of a 'some stupid with a flare gun' at a Frank Zappa concert. Deep Purple were scheduled to play here in the coming days and were staying at a hotel or whatever across the lake. They cracked some beers and watched the blaze, and the rolling 'smoke on the water'. At any moment, somewhere there is a kid playing that song in a music store. These folks are air-guitaring it on location:
Killer weather and this town is pretty high-roller. Big estates, excellent landscaping. People with tans.
The most important thing in Montreax is the Freddie Mercury statue. 4/5ths music nerd, as mentioned, Im pretty sure this was why they came to visit us in Switzerland.
HOT DOG!!! not the same.
Cool pic of Bern.

The Kindlifresser eats children. Good thing we're gettin old:
Cool in-Bern photo!
Back in Montreax, these pics are out of order!!! I took this pic of this old Rolls Royce. I thought it was cool, cuz it was unrestored and some dude was just driving it around and putting groceries in it like any old Fiat, Peugeot, or Renault.
Embarrasing pics are okay, as long as they dont make it on the internet. wait a sec... Shelly bought a scarf and silliness insued. This was probably Berlin, and I was just fitting in with the locals.

Keep scrolling. nothing to see here.
The Brandenburg Gate in Berlin. Im not a big fan of the purple and green....
Another fountain in Bern. Man, I should really put these in order!
Its weird that they have Starbucks in Europe, cuz you can walk into just about anywhere and get a real fancy cup o' Joe. I think this was at a used carpet store.
Amsterdam is beautiful. and its nice to have pictures from Amsterdam that you can actually show people.

Killer little canals cut up the town.

I love this photo.

1. We look like real Berliners, in a crazy Berlin bar

. 2. Christian's shirt reads 'Obama is my homeboy'

Same bar, different cameraman. Cheesy!

The thing in Berlin is Currywurst, which you buy on the corner, with some fries and a beer. Shelly and I are counting change, Christian is on the lookout. The guy with the blue bag is a friend, Jonas. He looks on to make sure we dont do anything culturally offensive.

over engineered.

Shelly encountered this in a restroom in Basel. With no shame, I went into the ladies room myself to confirm this Jetsons-ish phenomenon.

Sannenmöser and Schönried

While everyone else was going skiing, we decided to save ourselves from embarrassment. we began a short hike to the next village, Schönried. There was a set path to hike, through the valley with lots of eye candy (and randomly, a tropical bar of sorts) There, we were told, would be a trail in the mountains more suitable for walking.



And suddenly we were on the beach. or something. We were pretty creeped out by this, but since shelly dropped her glove 50 yards back we had to walk past the place again, and then we were convinced it was time to get warmed up and catch some sun. See the dog? He was missing an eye. While we had our coffee lots of other dogs showed up, and they started getting scrappy. It was überweird.

Heres Shelly as we step into Schönried. We had quite some snow, and I guess here it never got around to melting. Its piled pretty high on the rooftops. We took the gondola up to the top of the mountain they call Rellerli. There was a resteraunt up there (there almost always is at the top of the cable car thingies) and we had gotten a little hungry so we had some Röstli. Its a hashbrown kind of thing but this one was doctored up with cheese, bacon, pears, and an egg, yum!:

We sat outside, yknow, for the view.
from our table:
So now we decided to walk down the mountian, which is quite a big of a workout. Im figuring out the route here. Took about 2.5 hours of walking downhill. My legs are still pretty sore.

These should blow up real nice if you click on em. This one is cool cuz you can see the town below:


CRAP!!!! woops...