Zürich Airport and Basler Fasnacht

This last weekend was amazing. To start with, on Thursday night(not yet the weekend, but hey ;P) My host parents and I went to the Rotary dinner. It was all about Alfred Hitchcock, and it was very interesting. The man doing the presentation had asked me in the beginning if he should speak High German but I told him it was alright to speak swiss german, so he did, and I was surprised at how much I could understand. Supposedly they were serving "American Food" that night, and it wasn`t too bad. We had peanut soup though and I`ve never heard of that :P. Then we had chicken wings, baked potatoes and spare ribs, and then for dessert, in honor of Hitchcock, they served a plate with a chocolate cigar laying on top of a chocolate waffle ashtray, with chopped up chocolate and pistachios as the ashes, and then shortbread matches, and a little cup of whipped cream and Bailey`s. It was very creative, I wish I had my camera with me :(.
On Saturday, after the german course was finished, one of my friends had to drop his friend off at the airport, so a couple of us went with him. It was weird being there, because I hadn`t been there since I arrived in Switzerland, and it was a weird feeling thinking about going back and all. The host mom of Mackenzie, the other girl who came along, works at the airport, so we went and visited her. She took us to where she works, basically the control room of the whole place. Where everyone makes sure the fligths are on time and if there are any problems, etc. She deals with the crew, making sure there are enough, because the crew has a certain amount of working time, so if a plane is delayed and they go over their time, then they can just go home, and if there isn`t enough back up crew then the plane can`t leave. So she handles that. It was really neat seeing the behind the scenes of it all.
The Rotary man in charge of schools organized for the kids from the language course to go to the Fasnacht in Basel. So at midnight on Sunday/Monday, we met in Zürich and went together to Basel. We got there at about 1:30, and the parade didn`t start until 4:00, so we went to a restaurant and sat there a while, then we walked around a bit, in the rain :P. Fasnacht is the Swiss version of Carnival/Halloween. People get dressed up and there are parades and such, all over Switzerland. There`s also the popular "Fasnachtkuechli" which is fried dough with powdered sugar, mmmmm :D. The Basler Fasnacht is a famous one in Switzerland. So after walking around, the parade started, and it was a lantern parade, with big and small lanterns with pictures on them, and the people in the parade were all dressed up and playing drums and piccolos. It was so cool. There were kind of a lot of people in front of me so I couldn`t see the costumes very well, but it was still fun. After the parade ended, we went to Neuchâtel(also Neuenburg)and were there at about 7:30. We walked around, but it was really gray and rainy, so we couldn`t see the Alps from the lake, but the city is beautiful. The architecture is very French and it feels a lot different than the German part. We sat in a restaurant and had something to drink and had croissants. Afterwards a couple of us went back to Zürich, skipping the noon parade in Basel, and then finally went home. Then at 8 after being up more than 30 hours, I finally went to bed :).

Anways, it was a really fun weekend and I think this Saturday I`m going to go to the Autoshow in Geneva, I think it`s the biggest in the world, so that should be fun! So until later,

tschüss!