Wednesday, 1 July, 2009, Basel, Switzerland

I'm behind. We're in Basel, or "Bale" (with accent circonflex on the 'a'). Arrived here yesterday, on the first leg of our ridiculously break-neck trip to Switzerland and Germany. Phil wanted to visit a guy named Lukas here in Basel, and we're going tomorrow to Marburg in Germany to visit our friend Evelyn Korn, a mathematician/economist who visited us last February, and who has some project or other going with Phil. We'll be there for four days and then go to Tubingen (Nico Michiels) for two more nights, and back to Couze before Martin arrives. I've probably already mentioned this, but Phil is doing three DIFFERENT talks, one at each place. And we're doing this by train, which means lots of train time. The train from Bergerac to Liborne was too early but okay for a commuter. The TGV to Paris was great. Had to change train stations (from Montparnasse to Gare de l'Est, which means station of the East), and then were on something called "Corail" where we were in a first class room like you see in Harry Potter. Theoretically it was air conditioned, but it was about 95-100 degrees in there, and you couldn't open the windows. It was a four hour trip, too. It's gotten hot here, up in the 90's sort of all over Europe.

I do hope we manage to get on the ICE (German equivalent of the TGV) to Frankfort tomorrow; the computer wouldn't let me make reservations.

more later, gotta go for now