This Unimagined Life

Tag: crossfit

Life in Basel, Switzerland

From Sunny San Diego
to a Winter Wonderland

I haven’t lived through a cold, snowy winter in quite awhile. No matter how much I remind myself that my roots are in NY and I’ve grown up through some of the coldest, snowiest winters its pretty easy to forget what its like after living in sunny San Diego for a few years. Point being that for me to leave such a beautiful place, with amazing friends and gorgeous weather…there must’ve been a pretty good reason. (wink wink) Of course, the fact that the place I was leaving it all for was Switzerland didn’t hurt either. 🙂

I wasn’t very nervous about moving to Basel because I had such a great experience living in Ljubljana. I was well-versed in moving to a new country this time around. Plus, I would be with Alex and I was very excited to have someone to share all my experiences with. I thought I knew what to expect because I’d been through the transition when I moved to Ljubljana for three months. Basel ended up being an extremely different experience from Ljubljana.

To start with I was unemployed during my time there and was working on building up some freelance work. This means my salary was unreliable and only a percentage of what I had been making. Switzerland is not the best place to live under these circumstance as the cost of living is extremely high. I found it much more difficult to explore the city and make friends because of A) the weather and B) the expense. Plus, I didn’t have an office full of lovely co-workers to socialize with every day.

Not being used to the cold I was often unmotivated to wander around the city aimlessly to explore as I had in Ljubljana during the summer. Since I was working from home there were some days where I just felt completely cooped up in the house. I guess this is why people get cabin fever in the winter time. But eventually I got quite used to the public transportation system and got out of the house more and more. I think I would absolutely LOVE Basel in Spring, Summer and Fall. Winter of course is beautiful when it snows and is especially cozy during Nachtmarkt (the Christmas Market). It never got too cold to bear and the trains and buses were really great for getting around easily. Alex and I went on quite a few hikes on the weekends which was a really nice and inexpensive way to get to know the area.

As I mentioned, the other challenge of getting out in Basel was cost. To meet friends out for a few drinks you could easily spend 12-15 CHF ($0.94 to the dollar) per drink, possibly more. Eating out was a lot less frequent than what I’m used to…which wasn’t necessarily a bad thing for my health. Even a Burger King value meal was somewhere around 12 CHF! If you work in Switzerland then this isn’t usually a problem since Swiss salaries are generally much higher. But for me it definitely was an obstacle to getting to know Basel.

All that being said, aside from the usual homesickness of missing my friends and family from time to time these were the only real challenges of my transition to Swiss life. And the pros far out-weighed the cons.

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May 7, 2013
Castle WOD

I’ve not made many CrossFit posts since I’ve been here. I was doing pretty well in May and June and probably went once or twice a week. Maybe I even hit 3 workouts sometimes. I felt like that was pretty good considering I was keeping myself really busy and traveling most weekends. Plus with all the walking and bike riding I was doing I think I was staying on track. July however has not been quite as good. The workouts at CrossFit Plamen weren’t fitting in my schedule so well and I was lacking the motivation to WOD on my own. I’m really looking forward to getting back into a routine when I’m home. The CrossFit here is good but it’s just not the same community and workouts that I’m used to.

This morning I woke up to do a nice uphill run to the castle and a made up WOD at the top. Then a run back down and breakfast at a nice cafe before going home to get ready for work. I realized that while I really dislike running I don’t mind trail runs so much. And I found a nice spot at the top with a perfect tree branch for pullups, a bench for dips and pushups, and a stone wall for step ups (no wall jumps this time after busting my shins on it last time). I was rather surprised I could still do so many pullups after a few weeks off and while my time on the WOD wasn’t great and I could really feel that I had drank too much last weekend I was happy to complete it.

Run 2.5k uphill
rest and stretch

As many rounds as possible of 3 rep sets of deadhang pullups: total 5 rounds

WOD:
4 rounds of 40 air squats, 20 step-ups (25-30″wall), 10 pushups, 5 bench dips
time: 15:22

Run 1.5k downhill, eat breakfast, walk 1k home.

Note to self: Give yourself at least an hour between workout and eating or you will come close to losing your breakfast. Also, Grouplove is great running music.

Trail Run to Ljubljanski Castle

Run through part of the castle walls

A nice view of the city

Perfect pullup bar 🙂

A good spot for a workout. Wall for step-ups, bench for pushups and dips.

A beautiful Ljubljana morning!

July 23, 2012
Ljubljana by Bicycle

My feet are tired! Although the city is small I feel like I could walk through it numerous times and still find new things to see. There’s a lot to take in! After spending close to 10 hours walking over two days I decided to get a bike for my trip across town to CrossFit Plamen.

Ljubljana has a great bicycle program. All around the city are stations offering bikes for rent. I signed up for a 7 day pass to try it out. The first hour is free which is more than enough to get anywhere in the city. Then you just park it and you can come back later and take it out again. I think you only have to wait 5 minutes. If you use it longer than an hour the price is still just a Euro or two.

I was a little nervous at first. There are a lot of bikers in this city and the bike lanes are actually on the sidewalk with pedestrians. Some areas of town can be a bit crowded but I figured after having rode a bike down the crowded boardwalk in Pacific Beach, I should be able to navigate a crowd without hitting anyone. If all else fails the bike does come equipped with a little bell so you can get people to move out of the way. 🙂

Here are some sites from my first bike ride through the city:

I decided to ride over to Tivoli Park, a large park with wooded trails on the edge of the city. Somehow I got incredibly lost and rode for about an hour trying to find my way back. Along the way I saw some more interesting things.

Finally made it to Tivoli Park!

Map of the park. Here you can see the park in the light green area with the expanse of forest behind it filled with trails. This is a popular place for locals to hike, run and bike as well as sit in the grass and just relax.

I was starving when I arrived after getting lost for so long and so when I came upon this cafe across the pond I made a mad dash for it. Ate my first sandwich with bread in at least a year. Ciabatta with olive spread, prosciutto, mozzarella and arugula. It was well worth it!

A mansion sits in the middle of the park with a cafe and an art gallery

View from the mansion steps

I was so tired after all the bike riding that I decided to head home. This black cat and his pigeon friends greeted me in the alley for the second day in a row. I think it's peculiar that the cat just naps there with the pigeons right next to it. Good thing I'm not superstitious since it seems I'll be walking past this cat regularly!

May 6, 2012
My new CrossFit home – CrossFit Plamen

One of the first things I did when I found out I was coming to Slovenia was to check and see if there’s a CrossFit near me. Am I crazy?! Probably. I was excited to find that there was one pretty close to where I’m living. I decided to go check it out yesterday.

Because I love CrossFit and love to talk about it (probably to the point of being annoying), I figured I might as well post about it since I’m keeping a blog now. Maybe this will be a better outlet so that my non-crossfit friends don’t have to hear about it anymore. 🙂

To get to the box I decided to take a bike. It’s a bit across town and I knew post-WOD I wouldn’t feel like walking all the way back. So, it’s just a short walk to the bike station and then about 1.5 mile ride and then maybe a 5 minute walk from that bike station. I got a little bit lost finding the exact place as it’s in a sort of shed/barn type building down a gravel road among other houses.

The box itself is pretty small. Maybe about the size of the old CrossFit San Elijo location but more square than rectangular. They didn’t have nearly as much equipment but the nice thing about CrossFit is you don’t really need much. The coach, Katarina was really friendly and spoke English very well. I’m not sure if anyone else spoke much English which would explain why people weren’t very talkative to to me.

We warmed up with 3 rounds of 10 good mornings with PVC, 10 goblet squats, and 10 press with PVC followed by a 400m run. Did that twice. The WOD was a partner workout. While your partner runs 450m with a med ball (14#) you do AMRAP (as many rounds as possible) of the following. 9 deadlifts, 6 front squats, 3 push press. I think we did about 55#. When your partner returns from the run you switch. Then there is a 3 minute rest, then repeat two more times.

All in all it was a great workout and I decided to sign up for a twice a week membership for the month. At least this will help me burn off all the calories I will be eating in delicious food! 🙂

May 4, 2012