Navigating the 'Burbs

I bought a bike on Friday. Finally, after two years of not riding in Miami (which has recently been rated the Worst City to Bike In, by Bicycling magazine), and another year of being insanely jealous of Laura's bike I decided to buy a bike.

Laura picked out a bike store online. The site had lots of nice pictures of American made bikes, and the store seemed large and well stocked. The store was located in Münchenstein, which we knew was sort of in the Basel area. While we were on the train to Basel we passed the Münchenstein stop, and we knew we'd made some sort of mistake. I grew especially worried when it took our train nearly 20 more minutes to reach the Basel station after that.

There is a large information booth at the Basel train station. There's a wall of brochures and people there who speak english and should be friendly. I went in there with the address and showed it to the woman behind the counter. I asked her, "Can I walk here?" she said "You could walk to Geneva if you wanted". Now, imagine the snottiest, morst irreverant, german accented tone you can and you'll get her affect. She handed me a bus map and circled the stop nearest the store. She acted awfully put out when I continued to pester her with questions like "Where is the train station on the map" and "how much does the bus cost?"

We decided to walk. What's the point of spending three francs just to save a half hour walk? Plus, we figured we'd pass some other bike shops or see other interesting things along the way.

(This sounds like such a bad idea in hindsight. I've been conditioned to accept this attitude as normal though. Mom, remember walking to the Lincoln Memorial in 95 degree heat with 90% humidity? That's just the way things are done. A trip doesn't count unless you're 40% miserable--which means that for that to average out at the end you have to spend some of the time being 100% miserable. So, of course we Had to walk. Of course, it took more like two hours--though that time included a picnic behind a bus shelter. And, of course we saw nothing interesting along the way.)

We saw Things though. We saw several McDonalds' and our first glimpse of what I suppose is middle.class.suburbia.industrial.Switzerland. There were no sidewalks in places, weeds that were knee high, and nothing else but strip malls and factories for scenery. It felt like being back in Miami for about a half hour. Miami minus the palm trees though, so I guess it wasn't so bad. We did decide to take the train back.

And then we made it to Pete's. Which was nothing like what we expected.