Quarter Life Crisis

The world according to Sven-S. Porst

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Basel

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After being in Stuttgart, I went on to Basel. To Weil am Rhein, actually, which is just across the border from Basel. And those cities are in fact interwoven in a strange way. For example, one of the railway stations in Basel is actually German, despite being in Switzerland. I.e. after having crosses some kilometres of Switzerland on the train, you leave it and have to go through customs then. Which makes perfect sense in terms of convenience, I guess, but still seems strange.

Of course none of that mattered too much for me because entering and leaving Switzerland with a German passport isn’t a big deal to begin with and – in this case – they didn’t even bother to actually have a border official sitting in the booth at the station, making the experience no different from any other German railway station. Apart from the fact that prices in the stores at the railway station were in Franken rather than Euros – but people did accept Euros there as well. Particularly for the bus ticket that I needed to get back to Germany, for the party I was heading to.

And while I didn’t have time to cross it as well, there’s also a border to France in town so you can easily make a three country trip within an hour in that region. Quite amusing.

While I unfortunately didn’t get to visit the Design Museum in Weil while I was there, we did manage to have a look at the Rhein and a short trip around Basel before my train left. It’s quite a pretty small town with loads of nice old houses (I guess not starting or even being involved in world wars helps…) We went up the Münster which not only is really nicely done (and refurbished) but also offers a great view around the town from its tower. And with it being a perfectly warm and sunny day (in February…) we joined the crowds sitting right at the Rhein with a coffee. Nice.

View of the Rhein from the Münster

Afterwards it was off to the station on a long ride home with a little break at my brother’s in Heidelberg for a dinner break.

Approximation of my railway travel route by Google Maps using roads – more than 1300km apparently.

February 19, 2007, 0:58

Tagged as travel.

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