What a nice weekend. Saturday was a big day--Gretchen drove in Basel for the first time! It seems like driving should be no different than at home, but there are more one-way streets and roundabouts, slightly different road signs, trams, speed limits in kilometres instead of miles per hour, etc. She was a trooper.

Then I took the wheel and we headed out of town to find the kennel where Grady will be going. It's in a town called Mumpf (we love that name). Afterward, we went to a pretty old town called Rheinfelden. We were walking around when we all of a sudden came across Swiss border guards at a bridge. We realized we were at the Rhine, and that Germany was just on the other side of the river. Just for the hell of it, we walked across the bridge, entered Germany, and walked back. So now we can say we've walked to Germany. The other highlight was lunch, where we were served by a very friendly Swiss woman who sounded exactly like a German-speaking Harvey Fierstein [parental discretion advised].



After a grueling (not because it was competitive, but because I'm so out of shape) tennis match with a friend--my first time ever playing on clay--we made a spur-of-the-moment decision to go to Saint-Louis, France for dinner. In DC we used to sometimes go to a local French restaurant--since burned down, sadly--for dinner. Now, we can actually go to France! The restaurant, La Diligence, was just over the border, maybe a 10-15 minute drive. It's really strange when the road signs change abruptly from German to French. It's like you're in a completely different country...which I guess makes sense, because you are.