basel: the apartment
For the second weekend in a row we have been in a different city - exciting, but tiring. Still, there's no better time to travel than now, with the hot weather and the long weekends.
For this trip to Basel we also rented an apartment using AirBnB. We may well be converts to this aspect of traveling, if the price is right and the owner friendly. Switzerland is not a cheap travel destination and most hotel rooms go for an average of 200CHF a night. I managed to find us a two-bedroom apartment in St Johann, close to the centre of the city, for 140CHF a night. The Bun had his own room with a proper single bed to sleep in, Bao slept in a travel crib in our large bedroom and there was a huge living room for the kids to play in. The extra space is the key factor when the children are involved - after enjoying our stay in two apartments, now I can't imagine all of us crammed into a small little room, even if it were only to sleep in for the night. After the children went to bed, J and I could still enjoy cold beers in the living room and have some downtime to ourselves. If we were all in a hotel room we would probably take turns to go to the bar in the lobby (too lazy, too expensive) or just go to bed along with the kids.
I also like getting a glimpse into the way other people live. Even without sneaking around (and I don't go around opening all the drawers in the bedroom and such) you get to check out little details along the way - the type of tea they drink, the bath products they use, the books they read. Our owner had just finished her MA in English Literature and is a high-school teacher, so she had lots of novels in English that I browsed through. Apart from her books, her apartment was quite empty of her personal belongings because she was living with her boyfriend on and off in his apartment. She told us that she didn't want to give up her place, so being part of AirBnB is a good way to make some income on the side, especially since Art Basel is on in a couple of weeks and the city will fill up with tourists.
After your stay you do come home viewing your own apartment with a fresh perspective - if someone else were to live here, what would they make us out to be? Junk food addicts? Incurably messy? Too lazy to clean behind the fridge? Hoarders of milk bottle caps and free pens from hotels? I think that when it comes to decoration, J and I tend to be very restrained. We lived for a decade in our Singapore apartment without hanging a single picture because we couldn't agree on what we loved enough to commit on the wall. Over here, we have hung a few items up, but by and large personalisation is still lacking - we don't have many family photographs, for example, and I'm not a fan of seeing my own image plastered up everywhere in the home anyway. There are a few frames with the children's photos, though. The room that probably feels the most lived in is the kitchen, with school notes and kid artwork dotted on the fridge, Instagram magnets, supermarket coupons and notes to myself stuck on the cabinets.
Right now I feel a little too wilted from the heat to write properly about our short trip. J is leaving for Minsk in a couple of days so I'll probably use the quiet evenings alone then to catch up on my writing. Till then, I'm going to sit back with a very cold glass of water and get on with my reading. I just started book three and my Kindle says I've only read 37% of the entire series! I'm going to try to see if I can read all of it before the summer ends.
For this trip to Basel we also rented an apartment using AirBnB. We may well be converts to this aspect of traveling, if the price is right and the owner friendly. Switzerland is not a cheap travel destination and most hotel rooms go for an average of 200CHF a night. I managed to find us a two-bedroom apartment in St Johann, close to the centre of the city, for 140CHF a night. The Bun had his own room with a proper single bed to sleep in, Bao slept in a travel crib in our large bedroom and there was a huge living room for the kids to play in. The extra space is the key factor when the children are involved - after enjoying our stay in two apartments, now I can't imagine all of us crammed into a small little room, even if it were only to sleep in for the night. After the children went to bed, J and I could still enjoy cold beers in the living room and have some downtime to ourselves. If we were all in a hotel room we would probably take turns to go to the bar in the lobby (too lazy, too expensive) or just go to bed along with the kids.
I also like getting a glimpse into the way other people live. Even without sneaking around (and I don't go around opening all the drawers in the bedroom and such) you get to check out little details along the way - the type of tea they drink, the bath products they use, the books they read. Our owner had just finished her MA in English Literature and is a high-school teacher, so she had lots of novels in English that I browsed through. Apart from her books, her apartment was quite empty of her personal belongings because she was living with her boyfriend on and off in his apartment. She told us that she didn't want to give up her place, so being part of AirBnB is a good way to make some income on the side, especially since Art Basel is on in a couple of weeks and the city will fill up with tourists.
After your stay you do come home viewing your own apartment with a fresh perspective - if someone else were to live here, what would they make us out to be? Junk food addicts? Incurably messy? Too lazy to clean behind the fridge? Hoarders of milk bottle caps and free pens from hotels? I think that when it comes to decoration, J and I tend to be very restrained. We lived for a decade in our Singapore apartment without hanging a single picture because we couldn't agree on what we loved enough to commit on the wall. Over here, we have hung a few items up, but by and large personalisation is still lacking - we don't have many family photographs, for example, and I'm not a fan of seeing my own image plastered up everywhere in the home anyway. There are a few frames with the children's photos, though. The room that probably feels the most lived in is the kitchen, with school notes and kid artwork dotted on the fridge, Instagram magnets, supermarket coupons and notes to myself stuck on the cabinets.
Right now I feel a little too wilted from the heat to write properly about our short trip. J is leaving for Minsk in a couple of days so I'll probably use the quiet evenings alone then to catch up on my writing. Till then, I'm going to sit back with a very cold glass of water and get on with my reading. I just started book three and my Kindle says I've only read 37% of the entire series! I'm going to try to see if I can read all of it before the summer ends.