Our Sunday excursion was a short walk across the Rhine to the Paper Mill Museum (Papiermühle). It's in one of the oldest neighborhoods in Basel, medieval St. Alban.
In the middle of the 12th Century the convent of the monastery of St. Alban constructed a canal to bring water to drive water wheels (at one time there were twelve mills in the St. Alban valley). During the late Middle Ages ten of these mills were converted into paper mills causing the area to become the most important producer of paper in Switzerland during the 16th and 17th centuries. Paper was produced here for 446 years, until 1924. The museum is located in one of these old paper mills, providing the history of paper making, printing and book binding, and included many interactive activities as well (we used a printing press and typeset our names; Matt wanted to make paper too, but it was full of kiddies). Clearly a fun place for all ages!
After our coffee and cake in the museum's restaurant (popular spot), we headed home and it was snowing really hard. Very pretty -- unfortunately, it didn't last, but was a heavy 2-hour flurry. The forecast this week is for snow, so keep your fingers crossed!
Now backtracking to our morning.....we started our Sunday with some good ol' American football. We watched a re-run of the Broncos v. Ravens playoff game, and boy was it good! The Ravens pulled through in OT, wow. In Basel, we have several sports channels, most of which are random (snooker and darts??), but two are ESPN and sometimes show NFL games -- once in a while there's no commentary, which is kinda funny but mostly boring (you just hear the player's chatter and a lot of whistles from the referees). They replay some of the games the next day as well. It's great for these non-live (day after) games because they contain the commentary but cut out all commercials, which makes it go by so much faster. The 49'ers game was replayed next, and we watched the first-half before we headed to the Museum.
Now we're watching the Seahawks LIVE! The game started at 10 AM in Seattle, which makes it 7PM in Basel. Ok, the first half just ended and it's not looking good. Sigh, we're getting hammered by Atlanta!
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