Having unlimited free transportation within the Black Forest for staying overnight in spectacular Gengenbach, we took a scenic detour en route to our next destination of Colmar, through one of the Europe's famously tri-national cities. Located at the junction of Switzerland, France and Germany is the metropolis of Basel, the farthest point in our 1000 km voyage along the general direction of the Rhine.
With its city core in Switzerland and suburbs in French Alsace and the German state of Baden-Württemberg, Basel is probably better known as a venue for international conferences than as a tourist draw. Think the Basel Convention in the United Nations or the Basel III accord in international banking. I wouldn't have thought of Basel as a destination either, but I couldn't resist the thought of entering Switzerland for a day trip, especially when the train ticket was free.
True to its own unique international character, Basel actually has 3 train stations -- the Swiss and the French stations sharing one hub (Basel SBB) near the city centre, and the German station (Basel Bad Bahnhof) on the opposite side of the Rhine. Our Regionalbahn train arrived shortly after 11:00 at the German station, where we transferred to a local S-Bahn train (still for free) to the Swiss station to deposit our luggage in a locker for the day. Later in the afternoon we would hop on yet another regional train, this time at the French station, to the Alsacian city of Colmar.
The minor inconvenience about visiting Basel is that we're now leaving the Eurozone, and re-entering the 1990's when every major European nation had its own currency. So we drew 100 Swiss Francs from the ATM (there's no way that I'd pay the 4 Euros commission at the Money Exchange), paid for the luggage deposit and grabbed a take-out lunch of seafood salad and an excellent rotisserie chicken leg from the Migros supermarket inside the station. The chicken leg was so well-seasoned, juicy and fall-off-the-bones tender that it really deserved much better than a supermarket food counter. And besides, 13 Francs (CAD$15) for a take-out lunch for two was about as frugal as it could get in expensive Switzerland.
A quick hop on Tram #2 kicked off our self-guided tour on the opposite bank, crossing the most famous bend on the Rhine where the river makes its dramatic turn from East-West to South-North, just 2 kilometers upstream from the spot where the Swiss, French and Germany borders meet at the centre of the river. We're here for a quintessential Basler experience ...
Surviving to this date is an archaic system of tiny ferry boats crossing the mighty Rhine, secured by nothing but a long, flimsy-looking wire attached to an even longer wire stretching across opposite banks of the river. To make the crossing, the skilled boatsman simply tips the boat in the direction of the opposite bank and let the current push the boat across. This is REALLY cool ... no engines, no oars, just 100% green energy.
Adding to the coolness factor, some random guy showed up with a telescoping, collapsible carbon-fiber alphorn and put on an impromptu show for the audience on the boat! At first I thought this was a well-staged program by the local tourism office ... until the guy unscrewed and folded up his alphorn, got off the boat and walked home! We felt so lucky to be at the right place at the right time ... how much more Swiss can it possibly get?
That Alphorn guy alone had made our stop at Basel worthwhile, and everything else would just be the cherry on top. Getting off the boat we hiked up to visit one of Switzerland's great historic churches. The twin Gothic spires and patterned roof tiles of the Basler Münster have defined the city's skyline since the Middle Ages, but my own favorite part was the minimalist interior, a direct result of the Reformation, and the its solemn Romanesque crypt dating 1000 years back.
A short walk to the west brought us to the bustling Barfüsserplatz with its lively open-air market and streetside cafés. This was also the starting point of our self-guided tour roughly following the tourism office's booklet of 5 Walks across the Old Town of Basel as a guide.
But instead of sticking with just one of the recommended walks, we took a long rambling route crisscrossing from one walk to another to yet another. You can't really go wrong whichever one you pick, or simply wander off on your own without a map. There are plenty of these charming nooks and crannies in this hilly old town to be discovered.
From Barfüsserplatz we took the Leonhardsberg up to the historic prison of Lohnhof, then walked through some lovely 18th Century townscape on Heuberg and Spalenberg. Everywhere we turned were picturesque little lanes with these pastel color rowhouses with French mansard roofs, in an officially German-speaking city, where the inhabitants actually speak yet another mother tongue (Baseldytsch).
Along the way we came across this anonymous but lovely little fountain at the intersection of Gemsberg and Unterer Heuberg. While the Old Town of Basel isn't quite as world-famous as nearby Strasbourg's Petite France or even Bern's Altstadt, there is something inexplicably charismatic in how these narrow medieval streets wind their way up seemingly incredible slopes.
The Haus zum Wolf on Spalenberg was just one of the many fascinating locales we came across. From here we walked uphill on Spalenberg, turned right on Petersgraben towards the Peterskirche, then meandered in the general direction of the Rathaus. By this point we had already walked sections of the Jacob Burckhardt walk, the Paracelsus walk and the Thomas Platter walk.
As the endpoint of our self-guided tour we chose the unmissable Rathaus, a flamboyant palace on Marktplatz dating from the age of Renaissance. We returned to the Basel SBB station almost an hour earlier than planned, retrieved our luggage and moved over to the French side of the station. SNCF's regional TER train would then take us to one of our most anticipated destinations, the medieval city of Colmar, for the next 3 nights.
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