title: how to unstack (or pivot?) in pandas
body: <p>I have a dataframe that looks like the following:</p>
  
  <pre><code>import pandas as pd
  datelisttemp = pd.date_range('1/1/2014', periods=3, freq='D')
  s = list(datelisttemp)*3
  s.sort()
  df = pd.DataFrame({'BORDER':['GERMANY','FRANCE','ITALY','GERMANY','FRANCE','ITALY','GERMANY','FRANCE','ITALY' ], 'HOUR1':[2 ,2 ,2 ,4 ,4 ,4 ,6 ,6, 6],'HOUR2':[3 ,3 ,3, 5 ,5 ,5, 7, 7, 7], 'HOUR3':[8 ,8 ,8, 12 ,12 ,12, 99, 99, 99]}, index=s)
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>This gives me:</p>
  
  <pre><code>Out[458]: df
  
               BORDER  HOUR1  HOUR2  HOUR3
  2014-01-01  GERMANY      2      3      8
  2014-01-01   FRANCE      2      3      8
  2014-01-01    ITALY      2      3      8
  2014-01-02  GERMANY      4      5     12
  2014-01-02   FRANCE      4      5     12
  2014-01-02    ITALY      4      5     12
  2014-01-03  GERMANY      6      7     99
  2014-01-03   FRANCE      6      7     99
  2014-01-03    ITALY      6      7     99
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>I want the final dataframe to look something like:</p>
  
  <pre><code>             HOUR  GERMANY  FRANCE  ITALY
  2014-01-01   1     2        2       2     
  2014-01-01   2     3        3       3
  2014-01-01   3     8        8       8 
  2014-01-02   1     4        4       4
  2014-01-02   2     5        5       5
  2014-01-02   3    12       12      12
  2014-01-03   1     6        6       6
  2014-01-03   2     7        7       7
  2014-01-03   3    99       99      99
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>I've done the following but I'm not quite there:</p>
  
  <pre><code>df['date_col'] = df.index
  
  df2 = melt(df, id_vars=['date_col','BORDER'])  
  #Can I keep the same index after melt or do I have to set an index like below?
  df2.set_index(['date_col', 'variable'], inplace=True, drop=True)
  df2 = df2.sort()
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>df</p>
  
  <pre><code>Out[465]: df2
  
                           BORDER   value
  date_col   variable                 
  2014-01-01 HOUR1           GERMANY   2
             HOUR1           FRANCE    2
             HOUR1           ITALY     2
             HOUR2           GERMANY   3
             HOUR2           FRANCE    3
             HOUR2           ITALY     3
             HOUR3           GERMANY   8
             HOUR3           FRANCE    8
             HOUR3           ITALY     8
  2014-01-02 HOUR1           GERMANY   4
             HOUR1           FRANCE    4
             HOUR1           ITALY     4
             HOUR2           GERMANY   5
             HOUR2           FRANCE    5
             HOUR2           ITALY     5
             HOUR3           GERMANY  12
             HOUR3           FRANCE   12
             HOUR3           ITALY    12
  2014-01-03 HOUR1           GERMANY   6
             HOUR1           FRANCE    6
             HOUR1           ITALY     6
             HOUR2           GERMANY   7
             HOUR2           FRANCE    7
             HOUR2           ITALY     7
             HOUR3           GERMANY  99
             HOUR3           FRANCE   99
             HOUR3           ITALY    99
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>I thought I could unstack df2 to get something that resembles my final dataframe but I get all sorts of errors. I have also tried to pivot this dataframe but can't quite get what I want. </p>