Everyone loves a parade!

Here's the weekend update. It seems as if I'll probably just be posting on weekends, since that's when I actually get to do fun stuff. On weekdays I walk to the archive, I walk home, sometimes I go running. Ho hum.

Saturday, though, was fairly interesting. I left on my first trip of the day to go food shopping. As I was walking towards the store, I heard the sound of bagpipes. "Hmm," I thought, "I'm not in Scotland." I followed the sound to its source:

Apparently there's a whole shop devoted to the Basel Tattoo! Which, sadly, Patrick and I will miss, though I checked their website and it's already sold out. So why bother with the advertising? Anyway, Matt, you still want something from the knife store? Or are you thinking something a little more bagpipey?

That was not the end to the day's musical surprises, but first, the market:

OK Dad, which do you like more, olives...

or cheese?

These weren't even the biggest blocks of cheese on display, but I was trying not to be totally obnoxious about taking pictures, and these weren't directly in someone's face. You could get some flowers instead:

But why would you, when there's all that cheese to be purchased?

I had to stop back at home to drop off my bulging bag of groceries, but then I headed back out to get my ISIC card, one of the tasks on the day's agenda. Walking down to the main shopping street, I heard another musical novelty:

A brass band! Leading some sort of parade of old men:

Some of the old men got to ride in a carriage pulled by horses:

After they passed by, I went about my business and got my card (yay! discounts!) but I then had to go find a photo booth to put my picture on the card. This involved walking back through the Marktplatz, where I again heard the brass band. I followed the sound into the Rathaus, where they were clearly having some sort of display:

The guys were proudly showing off the flags, and then after playing for awhile, they marched out of there and continued on around town. I have no idea who they were or what this was for, and I didn't want to ask due to my almost complete lack of conversational German. Besides, everyone else seemed pretty baffled as well.

That pretty much covers yesterday's excitement, though I also went running (by myself!) along the Rhine. I would like to take pictures of that, but running with a camera seems like it would be awkward. Oh but wait, one more picture for Dad from the market:

Look at all those bikes! There are bike parking lots all over the place, but I think this is the biggest.

Today was decidedly less exciting, though I did go to the art museum:

This is the Kunstmuseum, which is the most basic and mainstream art museum in town. All the others have themes - super modern, cartoon, architecture, 18th century decorative, etc. This one is most famous for its Renaissance art but I basically skipped all that and went to the modern stuff. The featured exhibit was weird; one of the installations featured dryer lint draped over clothes lines. But there was enough Picasso and Mondrian and Klee and some awesome Swiss artist I'd never heard of before to keep me happy!