Thurdsday night was very nice. I went to a barbecue at a colleague's apartment and had a very nice time. As I haven't mentioned food in the past few posts, allow me to here...for apps we had goat cheese stuffed, bacon wrapped dates (baked in the oven, on toothpicks until crispy at about 270 celcius whatever that is, bread, some lecker spanish cheese...main course: wurst, chicken kabobs, pork, beef, other meats, salad, potatoes, corn, bubble water, and dessert was chocolate cupcakes with starwerries and cream. It was cool because the people at the bbq all worked in derm research, but were from all over: Russia, Poland, Singapore, Germany, Switzerland, Chile...Friday opened a bank accoutn a Die Post Bank. Saturday, spent some time in the city walking around the lake. Checked out the nice houses on one side of the lake, with some killer views. Met with a gentleman about sailing with him and his friend on his beautiful, old, wooden sloop. He was very nice and his two friends and I shared some bubble water and strawberries and cream. He told me the if I was still interested I could sail with them, but he said that he felt they were too old for me and that I wouldn't have fun, so he put me in contact with the under 30 sailing group. Today I met L & co. at about 13:00 at this little restaurant before the game and hung out for a while. When it came time to go into the game it turns out my seat was in the wrong section, so Yves and Umut snuck me into the Suedkurve...the "dumb american that doesn't speak german" card has a tendency to help in sticky situations quite well here. During the game people were lighting flares, firworks, colored smoke bombs, and as usual the songs were sung. Everytime the pyrotechnics from the audience would start a man would come over the loud speaker encouraging everyone to not light fireworks etc. "thank you for your understanding" etc. the flames continued :) To clarify one thing this is like the UM v. Ohio State game of Swiss Soccer. An interesting side note: Beer that can be purchased in the stadium on a regular game day has about half the alcohol content of normal beer in Schweiz to prevent fans from getting to drunkyly aggressive, beer on this day was half of that half...ringing in at about 2%. I realize now that these individuals are very passionate about their soccer, several common cheers involved the fans doing obscene things to Basels' mothers/ the mothers of the refs...Basel beat Zueri 3-1 and Police outfitted in SWAT gear took to the field to keep things under control. An entire pie slice of the stadium was left empty to prevent altercations between FCB fans and FCZ fans from arising. After the game though the pie slice didn't do much good. the fans busted down the chain-link fence and tried to attack each other while the cops tried to prevent them from attacking each other. We left the stadium and proceeded toward the train station where the Basel team was leaving. A fire-hose was on crowd-control and hooligans were trying to cause problems with the SWAT polozei and getting sprayed. As we got closer my eyes started to burn..."ahhh why are my eyes burning?" I asked the guys, "Oh trennen gas..." "Hm?" "Tear Gas..." so many firsts in this lovely country. Luk told me that the cops can keep everything under control except soccer. People were getting shot with "Gummi" or rubbery-plastic, by the cops to get them to settle down. We were at a safe distance, do not worry, we were just there for the show. When the Basel cars (cars with license plates from the 'wrong kanton') drove out of town various things were thrown at them, beer cans, pieces of road, body parts, whole bodies (one window was actually busted out of a Sprinter). For a 'neutral country' I was very surprised by this outpouring of passionate destruction. Not long after we headed toward home, I saw the street sweeper cleaning up the fray; that's thing I must say for Zuerich...they could have a explosive disaster and the next day you'd have no idea it ever happened. Their clean-up task force is very good. Now I'm home.
Bis Bald!
ox
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