Basel
Basel (population: 180,000) sits in northern Switzerland along the border of France (to the northwest) and Germany (to the northeast). It is considered the cultural center of Switzerland. It has several notable art museums, a large annual art festival (Art Basel), and is home to the oldest university in Switzerland. Over the centuries, Basel has been a safe haven for various persona non gratae. For example, Erasmus and Nietzsche decamped here when their home countries became somewhat less hospitable to their ideas.
We spent half a day in Basel. Our visit included brief stops at the Spalen Gate, the Middle Bridge, City Hall, and a longer stop at the Kunstmuseum Basel (Art Museum of Basel).
The Spalen Gate is one of several fortified gate houses constructed in the 15th century as part of the city's wall. The walls are mostly gone and only several of these gate houses remain, of which Spalen is - according to the city's website - the best. It is quite striking, especially the tile work on the roof of the central gate house.
From here, we wandered over to the middle bridge. What you see today is actually 20th construction that replaced the original 15th century bridge in order to allow heavy trams to trundle over the Rhine. There is a small chapel located in the center of the bridge, which mostly serves as architectural homage to the original bridge, which also had a centrally located chapel. But from what I can tell, the old bridge is gone. In any case, this has always been the site of an important crossing over the Rhine - one of only a few that existed during the Renaissance - that helped to establish Basel as a commercial hub.
City hall was our next brief stop. We didn't actually go in City Hall, but rather perused the wares at the farmer's market in the central square out front. But the building is hard to miss - it's big and red and centrally located. It was constructed following the 1356 Basel earthquake, which was the largest seismic event in central Europe in recorded history (estimates put the Richter scale at 6.0-7.1). The building was further enhanced after Basel joined the Swiss confederation in the 16th century, then again in the 18th and 20th centuries. I'm not sure when it acquired the red sandstone facade, but that's the defining feature today. Also, the facade allows for a pun: in German, the building is called a "Rathaus" (council house), which in the Basel dialect is pronounced vaguely like "roothus" which also sounds a lot like Basel German for "red house."
Our last stop was the Kunstmuseum (Fine Art Museum) where we spent a couple of hours taking in large collection of works spanning the late medieval era to modern art. Unsurprisingly, a lot of the works were from Central and Northern European artists (e.g., Bruegel), but there was also a fair number of works by French and other artists, including many impressionists. H and I felt the Medieval collection - which was a decent share of the art, here - was a little boring, frankly. As far as I can tell, this era seemed to consist of artists competing to see who could best depict the same half a dozen scenes from the life of Jesus (Mary and the baby Jesus, Gifts of the Magi, etc.) - a massive game of one-up manship that somehow lasted for centuries before somebody thought to ask whether it might be worth painting something else. But honestly, that's more of a quibble. The rest of the collection was fun and overall we liked this museum.
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| Spalen Gate |
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| City Hall |
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| Due to COVID-19, the Fasnacht celebration had to be canceled. The mood of the city is depicted here. |
Hiking to Schnapps
Saturday (yesterday) we went hiking between Weggis and Greppen - two small towns located along Lake Lucerne - with good friends Ben and Laura. This was a leisurely hike, relative to some of our past excursions. We wandered through cherry orchards where we stopped to buy the fresh fruit for our journey. Next, we passed over rolling hills and through cow pastures with bewitching views of the lake. Finally, we meandered through some shaded woods before ending our hike at Haldihof, which is a farm and distillery in the middle of nowhere.
Haldihof sits perched on a hillside overlooking Lake Lucerne. The main business at Haldihof seems to be fermenting and/or distilling various local grains and fruits into gins, brandies, ciders, wines, and vinegars. But there is some kind of side operation which involves Alpacas, which wander around the farm, munching on grass and gazing - mostly uninterested - at passing hikers who line up along the gates to gawk at them. There are other fauna at Haldihof. Like all good farms, Haldihof has a friendly, if somewhat unkempt, dog. The dog stopped by our table briefly, not to say hello to us, but rather to nibble at the remnants of discarded ice cream bars in the trash. Also, we saw a couple of peacocks wander through, pecking at the grass and enjoying the shade under the barn. Are we in Switzerland still?
We lounged at Haldihof for an hour or two, nibbling (or gobbling, depending on your self-control) on cookies H made the night before and sampling spirits, which left us in a good mood. The subsequent bottle of sparkling hard cider left us in an even better mood. Before departing, we stopped in at the store and purchased a variety of goodies to take home. H and I got apple cider vinegar (unpasteurized--a somewhat rare find here--and aged in a wooden barrel), honey vinegar, and an apero.
You might be wondering how we got home from this remote location, burdened as we were with the lethargy brought on by the drinks and the weight of several bottles of vinegar and spirits. Well, Haldihof is located near a random bus stop along a country road. H and I boarded a bus here and took it to Brunnen, and from their a train to Zurich - easy peasy. Yet another example of Switzerland's vast and comprehensive public transportation system.
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