On Saturday, we were up bright and early to drive to Basel again. Our first of three flat viewings was at 11 am, meaning the latest possible time we could leave Karlsruhe was 9! And that is why we spent Valentine’s Day driving and looking at flats. Good job neither of us actually cares about the day of lurrrve 😉 We did, however, manage to stop for lunch in between the first two flat viewings. We went to a little baker’s/cafe where we each drank a home-made hot chocolate with chilli and I couldn’t resist eating an “Igeli”. Der Igel is German for hedgehog, but the Swiss like to diminutise (is that a word?) everything, and so it becomes Igeli. The English equivalent I suppose would be hedgehogling – in the sense of duckling or gosling (or maybe it would be hedgehoglet? Piglet… hoglet… hedgehoglet? You get the idea, anyway). Before I ate him, I had to snap a picture. Just look how cute he is!
Later, we had a slightly longer gap between viewings and the sun had come out (after pouring rain in the morning), so we decided to check out the zoo. Sadly, there are no red pandas there, but they do have meerkats, orangutans and some interesting birds. My camera battery was low, so I didn’t take many pictures, but here are a few:
As for the flats: the first one was most suitable, the second was nice but not in the best area and the third was expensive and also the available date has been moved back, but was very large and central. We took forms for all three of them anyway. And now, we go back to waiting… and in the meantime continue to try to arrange viewing appointments. We’ve managed to get 2 more for Friday afternoon, so I’ll be working overtime from now until Thursday and taking Friday afternoon off work. *Sigh* Flat hunting is exhausting!
Confuzzledom 
That hedgehog pastry is too cute!! How funny that the Swiss make everything sound cute … the Dutch do the same thing, and to literally everything!
There’s an area of Basel called “Gundeldingen”, but literally everybody calls it “Gundeli”. Even in the adverts for flats it says “in Gundeli”. It’s cute/hilarious.
That looks too cute to eat.. almost! That’s quite interesting as in Swedish hedgehos are called Igelkott, which I’ve always thought was a bit of a strange name, as in norwegian they are called pinnsvin (which translates into “pin pigs”) which makes a bit more sense Fingers crossed for the flats!
Pin pigs! Excellent. So, Svin like “swine”?
Igel is odd because a pig in German is Schwein. But then Stachelschwein (literally “spiky pig”) is a porcupine.
Yeah Svin – Schwein / Svine. Igel is actually even more confusing because you have an Igelkott which is a hedgehog, but then you also have a “blodigel” which is a leech… not sure what the correlation is there..
LOL languages are so fun!
oh and “kotte” means pinecone in swedish, which come to think of it might be quite apt for a hedgehog!
That hedgehog pastry is definitely too cute to eat! 🙂
Almost too cute 😉 I ate him anyway.
That hedgehog is so cute! But ah flat hunting does sound exhausting!
It really is!
Cutest pastry ever!!!
It was pretty adorable 🙂
I can’t believe how many flats you are having to view! I love that you used the word flat, here people say apartment. I miss saying flat. That hedgehog is delightful and I would have been in seventh heaven with those colourful birds and meercats around!
That hedgehog is a bit creepy-looking. Beady eyes… 😉
Hope the flat-hunting comes to a happy ending soon!
Haha, do you think so? Well, I ate him up… beady eyes and all!
Well, it’s still cake, after all 😉 Beady or not!
High five fellow red panda enthusiast!
*High fives* I love red pandas. I’m going to miss the ones in Karlsruhe soooo much!
Flat hunting is busy busy! I hope those on Friday give you some more options!
I’ve never seen anything like the hedgehog thingy before, but he does look cute, not too cute to eat though 😉
It really is busy. I hate that we have to fill in forms for Every. Single. One. then sit and wait until they decide whether to offer the flat to us or one of the other people who are interested. One person wrote back to me and said they’d already had more than 40 people view the place!!
That hedgehog is definitely more creepy than cute. Look at those soul-less eyes…
Good luck on flat-hunting!
LOL, well I found him cute… 😉