Like this:

Hey, just a quick check-in from Basel, Switzerland, where I’m hanging out with my ‘aunt’ Isa. We’ve just been puttering around the city together, stopping roughly every hundred metres for a coffee, making fun of the young people and their crazy fashions. I got in yesterday at 8 am and followed SMS directions to Isa’s cool flat near the Rhine where she’s lived since forever, and we sat on her balcony and drank coffee and enjoyed the sunshine.

It’s been so fun hanging out with her, it’s nonstop chatter between us (I feel like my English is suffering from spending so much time talking to people whose second language it is, though) and she knows my whole family better than I do. Today we looked at photos from when she lived in the U.S. around when I was born, and she told me all kinds of stories about my parents and all their friends. I haven’t been here since I was two and a half, so it’s also really cool to see the city again, and try to remember being here the first time. The only hard part is that I don’t understand anyone here who isn’t one of the hated German tourists. Baseldytsch is such a crazy form of German that it’s essentially a different language. Reading stuff is easy, though, since it’s only the spoken language that’s weird. Everyone is always lilting and talking about Kaffeli and Tramli.

Anyway, it’s time for me to crash out, as Isa would say, but I’ll update more with photos and narration and all the usual business when I’m back to my home base. The next stop is Istanbul on Tuesday night/Wednesdaz evening, and my couchsurfing host just cancelled! He set me up with another cs host though, and I always have my backup plan so no worries. Ah, the adventurous life of the jet-setting world traveler…

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