NFT: I

PAST:

North Field Trip:
Tues. Night
-starting same day as returning from Berlin... stressful, no time to do much but pack! Had to do emergency hat/mittens shopping to prepare
-my back hurt and I had a little cough this day, but it didn't seem to be a big deal
-overnight train. apparently these are ending after December, last chance for these!
-the cabin was SO TINY, and there were six beds crammed in there.. we actually ended up going to bed pretty much right away, even though it was only 9. A couple people in our cabin weren't feeling so well, and there wasn't enough room to sit up a little and read, so sleep it was.
-the train felt so slow. I slept great... until about 1:30 am
-they gave us a nasty packaged muffin thing for breakfast.. it was not really edible.

Wednesday
1 hour in Bern, waiting at train station, Meghann got bowled over by some Swiss dude, then train to Basel
-had about 45 minutes to wander around. Found a store that had beautiful scarves on sale, but it wasn't open. Got cappuccinos, my back started to hurt really bad
-Poster presentation by Dr. Rolf Thalman at the Basel Poster Museum. Beautiful Swiss Posters, it was really great to see them full size and in person, especially some of the Herbert Matter ones. There were posters and ID cards stuffed all over the little room. It was really interesting, but I was starting to feel a little feverish and my back was hurting, so it was getting really difficult for me to stand and listen....
-free time for a couple hours, ate and drank a lot of orange juice, wandered around some shops
-napped on the bus ride out to Vitra, in Germany just across the border
-Vitra: long tour, mostly of the architure. Big names: Gehry, Bucky Fuller, Zaha Hadid (who did the crazy disorienting fire house)
-the showrooms were the best part: fun, beautiful furniture and objects!
-napped back to Basel, then off to the hostel
-went out for Chinese, it was actually pretty decent Chinese, and a great change from Italian food.
-since I wasn't feeling well, it was straight to bed for me then...

Thursday
-free morning, wandered around.. I felt better, still super stuffy, but at least I could handle standing up for long chunks of time.
-found a couple cool churches, more gothic style, it was a nice change
-one church had an exhibition of some interesting woven rugs, I'm not sure where they were from, but they were totally different than things we see in Italy.
-found a great view
-WHY was there a table full of metal vegetables at one of the churches??? I'll never know.
-met back up with class and headed over to the Paper Mill Museum.
-wrote with real feather quills, hand-made paper, marbled paper, set type and letterpressed
-train to Zurich, then long trek out to Hostel
-ate at some pizza place, had a crazy veggie pizza (green beans, eggplant, strange!), major language barrier here.. none of us have any inkling of German...
-really bad cough this day, so straight to bed again.


PRESENT:

Today, I did the cooking class with Robert Huber (aka Johnny Depp according to some people..haha), one of the art history professors. It wasn't so much cooking class as eating marathon. We basically spent about five and a half hours eating and drinking wine.. not so much time actually cooking. A little time was spent watching in the kitchen and listening and not a ton.
Antipasti: Some sort of thingly sliced potatoes with goat cheese on a bed of lettuce, with balsamic vinaigrette, frittate (like an onion omelette), boar sausage, bread
Primi Piatti: Handmade mushroom and ricotta ravioli with cream sauce and porcini mushrooms
Secondi Piatti: Guinea foul, wrapped in prosciutto, with green beans, potatoes, and pear sauce
Dessert: White chocolate mousse with chocolate shavings, rum, raspberries and a mint leaf.
It was extremely tasty, and fun because we were with mostly interior students, too, so there wasn't really any talk of projects going on.

I was looking forward all week to this dance night some of the interior girls were talking about, with Boyz Noize DJing. ALL WEEK, I was super excited about it. Then we found out that it was way farther away than they thought it was... so disappointing!