Au revoir Basel

Time flies! this is always true, especially when you have a good time, and to be fair, I think I have had a good time in Basel. Even when taking into consideration the long hours in front of hundreds of excel files, the uncertainty about how was all work going to be at the end, and some headaches because of the microclima that this region of Switzerland seems to have, I can say once more that "time flies", and my time in Basel this summer has come to its end.

Below, my last dinner in Basel, before all the people you can see in the picture bacame incapable of walking due to the ammount of very good pizza we had in our stomachs. Andreas, thank you for the fantastic Basel map you draw in June. Especially for your selection of bars and restaurants.
After dinner, the remainig components of a BOW that will continue even without interns during the year, decided to go to Bar Rouge for the last gin&tonic in Basel, a bar in the 31st floor of the highest building in Switzerland (yeah, switzerland is not precisely "the place" if what you are looking for is just high buildings). In our way there, and giving that the weather has decided to be good again just when I leave, we walk in front of some men enjoying strett chess.
Bar Rouge. This place is really good (except for the price). The bar is well decorated, the music is good, and when you go up in the elevator it looks like you ar going to hell, but instead of doing that way down under the earth, you take the elvator up.
The only thing is that considering the nice night views you have from the whole city once there, there is usually not a lot of people, the people who is there are not in a very daniong mood, and do not know why but I have reached the conclusion that the place is cursed. This is the only explanation that I can think of, because this bar would be absolutely crowded everyday in any other city.
Well, that is more or less everyting I guess. I will miss some things from Switzerland: the weekend trips, the mountains, the friends I leave here (including Germany), the swimming in the Rhine, my runnings following the river, some beers in the park close to my place, our summer BOWs, the crazy nights in Zurich and the people with whom I have been there, the morning coffees with Ignacio in our smoking turkish bar close to Novartis, the afternoon cigarrete with Paco to talk about how things are going on in cardiovascular marketing, and many other things which, if mentioned all, will make you change url very fast.
On the other side, I am glad to come back to my city, Barcelona, a place with a much more stable mediterranian weather, and to leave some things I won't miss: Having one of my fingers white every time I try to open the cream for my expresso, or to be unable to speak a word of german (or should I better say to not be able to pronounce any sound that sound like german), and some peculiarities which I can't really understand. For example, why you can take your litter out only on mondays and thursdays in Basel? What happens if I decide to invite 10 people to my micro-apartment for a friday dinner consisting of...smelly fish? and many other things that, if mentioned all, will make you change url very fast. Ahh, another thing that I won't miss for sure is the conversation I will have tomorrow morning with the easyjet person in charge of weighting my luggage.

So I guess this is the end of this short-life blog. Many people have asked me to keep the blog going. Apreciate. I am not sure about this. In spanish we say "lo bueno, si breve, dos veces bueno". So I guess is better to close this now that it has accomplished the purpose for which was created. Now we have to move on and finish the MBA. Time to think again about how is going to be the incomming year (well, we are not in 2007 but you know, I am still working with school calendars, so for me tomorrow starts a new year). I think I have three main objectives for the year. One is to find a good job, and one that I really like. The other is to spend a good time with all my friends from IESE (this includes winning the Olympics) and the rest of my people in Barcelona. And the third one, well, that one is not of your business.

If I remember well, this is the first pic I took in July just arrived from the airport. We can repeat the pic as a sunny melancolic image of the beggining of my internship. At that time I didn't know if it was going to be good or bad, but with that pic as the first one, I should have known already at that time that is was going to be a good summer.

I think this is the view that I have seen more times in Basel, both in my way to work and in the afternoon in my way back home. Look at the sky: do you think is going to rain or not? Difficult eh!!
I steal a pic from josh as the leaving pic.

ok, we are ready to leave now. Good bye Basel! Good bye rhine!

Music for today: Fugees - Ready or not

Journalism

Wednesday. Three days to leave Switzerland. I am happy and sad at the same. After spending half of my nights here watching Tv series like 24 or Lost, I have a new distraction, but this time in the mornings: The semi-overweight-latin-american woman that presents the weather forecast every morning around 7:30 in CNN. Lets rephrase that. The distraction is not exactly her, but to see how the weather will be in different parts of the world. One month ago, while eating my morning muesli, I would just turn into any newspapers or the computer screen when I saw the ususal typhoon or tornado going on in Asia. Now I am paying attention to that. And I like it! This is bizarre! Its something like a hidden hobbie. Have you seen the movie "demolition man"? I think is in that movie that Silvester Stallone discovers that his hidden hobbie is to make wool clothes manually (again, sorry for my poor english, there must be a verb for this). Maybe mine is to watch weather forecasts. I am exagerating again, lets change topic.

Paco reccomended me a very short marketing book some weeks ago. This summer I have also been doing some of the reading I couldn't do during our busy first year of MBA. sincerely, I prefer good literature rather than these boring business books but anyway. I was curious yesterday about one of the questions of the book to show that we always keep in much more in mind (and thus make it more succesful) the first brand that enters in the market, not the second. Then the book asks who is the second president of the USA (if you are not from the states this question is not easy :). Then I googled that and found the name of John Adams, and after that I read a good sentence by that man that I copy here just to "inflate" this post:
" I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. My sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history and naval architecture, navigation, commerce and agriculture, inorder to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry, and porcelain".

Well this post seems a bit short, and there are no pics in it, so I have decided to show the insights of the blog, so you can see by yourself how I have risked my life and go through the impossible to get you the information about my weekend trips, boring stories and other things.

Marc taking pics to post pics: This is in Dusseldorf, in avery very dangerous neighborhood as you can perfectly recognize. I am very proud of this pic
This one....I have no idea what I was doing when Marek took me this picture, but it looks I was again taking risks at night in a very uncomfortable position so that you could have first hand info about Germany.
Tourist photo in Zurich. This is always risky, we don't want the family to have a remembering of the city that everytime they look at it makes them talk shit about the guy who took the photo.
There was a frog in front of me in that rock that I was trying to put in front of the sightseeing of Interlaken. Dangerous once more. Forget Australia, tehre are really poisonous frogs in this country....and most of people is not aware of this.
More in Interlaken
Well, this is not a pic of a pic, but you can see how a good journalist goes where the story is, and walks near two drunk women from the mountains dancing like crazy. Really dangerous activity.

The music: Electric Six - Danger! High voltage

Religious partying

Its been rainig really hard, again, for the last couple of days. My small pfizer umbrella was unable to do its job properly again this morning, and I arrived at the office kinda wet. Once again, it has been confirmed that my thin waterproof jacket is the money better spend by far this summer (together with the weekend trips). I was wondering how is the winter here. Maybe with snow is a different story, but the same rain with 20 degrees (celsious) less could be really........bad. The report of this weekend brings us to the photo above, which is the nornmal aspect of one church in Basel, near the fountains that you see, and near one of my favourites bars in the city (Campari bar) with a nice terrace full of trees where I have had many "reading beers" this summer. Those are the beers you drink while reading a book, which taste a bit different than the ones you drink with friends.
I was having dinner with some friends in an Indian restaurant and we were heading towards a bar when I called Marek, my friend in Dusseldorf, to see if we could see each other for the last time this summer. Marek tells me that he is in a party inside a "charge" (this with a loud surrounding noise that makes impossible for me to understand properly english with german-polish accent). In a "charge"? No idea. Maybe its the name of the party. Next call: I am already in the fountains. Where is the charge? I can't see any charge? Well, basically, please can you tell me where is the party? In the charge. Oh, fine! Then I follow the stream of people and end up in front of the charge. There is a queue to enter inside a church (Ahhhhhhh, the charge!)

I pay 25 francs while asking the woman in the entrance if there is any drink included, and she looks at me saying that the money is for a good cause to help some poor children. The drink included and the good cause are incomaptible I guess. Well, this is for a good cause so I pay the 25 francs quite excited to see what the hell (ups, sorry for the "out of context" expression) is inside the church with flashing lights going out from those big and beautiful windows.

And this is what we find inside the church. Or should I say inside the club? And do not think that the place is a kind of abandoned church. That was a saturday night, so after around 8 hours after we left the Sunday mass was going on in the same place. I was shocked.

Once inside, I ask for a gin & tonic. The waiter tells me that "this looks like a club but is a church, only priests drinks here". Fair enough, two beers please. He did not say that but I guess the explanation is that having hard alcoholic drinks in a church is a bit too much, even if the party is for a good cause.The music, standard rock&roll songs for a high-school party, with some songs from RHCP and other more modern groups, but nothing fancy. I guess is a bit too much for a church to bring a techno or house Dj.

Music for today: New Order - Blue Monday