virtual fun space

this post will find us in zurich at a pretty crappy internet place and arcade called virtual fun space which is virtually no fun at all (yes hello and welcome to our special friends, our really special friends)... but zurich is good so far. quickly from me and then matt has a book he wrote that i guess he'd like to share.

freiburg is topping out the list of beatiful cities with a lot to offer and to keep one interested. to start, the city is surrounded on most sides by the southern part of the black forest and the resulting types who frequent the city are evident. mostly outdoors types and plenty of cyclists. the old city mixes well with anything more modern and there's a bit of a quiet outer borough feel to it but it's just a bit more compact. the main element of the place though is water, and you can hear water running or gurgling anywhere you are, as there is literally water running under your feet in these old itty-bitty creek type things that matt knows the name of. i couldn't ever figure out where they came from, but there they were. and those combined with two beautiful rivers flowing through the city, one of which i gathered was used to generate electricity but i could have misread the sign. anyway, i've come to the conclusion that it'd be a great city to be a bike mechanic... and drink great local beer.

then basel. what a crap shoot. the most redeeming quality was our hospitality club host and his girlfriend. it was good to hang out with them after our long walking tour of the city. other vague pluses: preference to the cyclist and pedestrian... and that's about it. all the beer was corporate owned, carlsberg or otherwise. even local beers didn't have much to offer. their novelty lay in the fact that they weren't carlsberg. Unser Bier and Ueli Bier were the two local offerings and only really had good logos. and then there's the expensive factor. no idea how to describe the ridiculousness of the cost here... one thing to chalk up on the list of successes though, a cafe owner actually mistook us for germans based on our speaking. and with our hospitality club hosts we only spoke german... bern on the other hand