Hitchhiking from the middle of France to Switzerland took a long while as most of the French drive to Paris on the motorway. So instead of the motorway, we decided to use other main roads, but we really had to walk a lot. At one point Louise even made a ‘Stop’ sign, because all we were doing was walking. Just then, Constantin stopped for us, a Romanian forester who was on his way to pick up his colleagues. Yes, he’d heard of travelling craftspeople, but girls! He immediately offered us a place to sleep for the night. He lived in a house with his five colleagues out in a village and although they didn’t have much room, they made a great Romanian meal and he offered us his room to sleep. It was a really nice evening; they were all interested in what we were doing and where we were going and later we all watched football together.

Next day we made it to the border at Basel. Some French boys brought us to the crossover point and we walked over the border on our own. Through Max, a friend at our Glass School, we had a contact in Basel, Matteo Gonet. Matteo and his team of five, work on projects and ideas for artists and designers. They are presented with a design and the team build the installation, sculpture, or light installation out of glass.

We can stay and help them through to the end of December and over the last few days have learnt silvering, which means coating the inside of a glass sphere with different chemical substances, so that seen from the outside it produces a mirrored surface. The spheres will be threaded onto a metal frame this week and are a sculpture designed by Othoniel Studio.