the first weekend in Basel

Finally, after 2 months of holidays, I'm in Basel, ready to start working this Monday.
The first impact of Basel made me feel like an alien. It's funny to go around the city and don't understand a single word!
They speak a german that is very distant to the one I studied. Ok, I haven't studied that much but even the most common phrases (hello, how are you, and so on)
are different! They are, as far as I can understand, a mix of german and french.
The problem is that this is a dialect. There's no way to learn it in a school. You have to speak with them to learn it.
But this is not really a problem: everybody here speaks at least a couple of languages.
So today I went to a gym to ask some information. The girl who attend me was very kind but I went out with a kind of language shock: we were discussing in 3 languages (french, english, italian) all mixed together!!!!
Fortunately, Saturday was a beautiful sunny day and everybody was enjoy it on the boardwalk along the river Rhein.

The other problem is that I'm here by myself. No friends around!!!
But fortunately, my relocation company is taking care of it. They are organising a social event in a couple of weeks. The program includes a couple of drinks in Mr. Pickwick, a British pub, and 100 drinks in Paddy Rally's, an Irish pub.
Considering the love I feel for pub and that I spent 2 years in Dublin, this is not the kind of social event I was looking for :-)
But, I will survive it!

I'm really surprised by swiss organisation.
When I arrived, there was a person waiting for me at the train station, a fornished apartament in the city center with internet broadband, a good bottle of wine in freeze, and a chocolat bar on the bed.

The chocolate is already gone, the bottle is on the way :-)
When I arrived in Dublin, I did everything by myself. Even finding an apartment, not an easy job at all in Dublin!
That is all folk for my first weekend in Basel!