Basel to Staufen Day 0 - CH to F to D

S and I arrived in Steinebach last Thursday, and on Friday a brief but potent thunderstorm felled a 60-foot tree in the woods down the hill, blocking the road and snapping the telephone and wifi cables. After we spent a few hours wondering whom we could borrow a chain saw from, a friend told us that when a tree falls across a road in Germany, you call the fire department. So S called, and the volunteer firefighters zoomed up from the lakeside music fest where they had been hanging out, and they chopped up the section of tree blocking the road. That commotion brought out a neighbor at the bottom of the hill, who volunteered his son and his son's chainsaws to help a growing group of menfolk clear the part of the trunk that was blocking another neighbor's driveway.

Road blocked

Branches stripped and logs ready to roll in neighbor's driveway

On Monday, we took a train to the nearest competent Deutsche Telekom shop (which is farther away than the nearest incompetent one, which we tried first) to pick up a mobile hotspot device to tide us over until the cables can be repaired.

All of which is to say, I'm tardy reporting on hikes and walks, but I have excuses. And check this out: my first 100-mile week of 2024! (Required a 10:30pm 1.6 mile walk between downpours to top it off--such is the thrill of seeing that 1 in the hundreds place.)

We're heading out for this summer's long hike in two days, so the walks so far are either going to get blogged about today and tomorrow, or not at all.

Here's a start.

Monday June 3, Basel to Staufen, Day 0: 

S had a conference in Basel, so we flew to Zurich and took a train to Basel. After checking into our hotel, we went for a 7-mile walk, because we've finally learned that the best way to overcome jetlag quickly is to spend a few hours walking in daylight as soon as possible. 

We chose this particular route so we could truthfully say "today we walked from Switzerland to France to Germany and back." The Germany part was important, because while S was busy chatting with colleagues about state-of-the-art nanoparticle science, I was going to spend 2.5 days walking north to Staufen. Getting the first few miles out of the way in advance meant I could hop on a train the next morning and start from Weil am Rhein.

Switzerland to France to Germany to Switzerland

Basel Rathaus

We had been following the news about heavy flooding in Southern Germany, so it wasn't a surprise that the Rhine was overrunning its banks in Basel. Note the submerged sidewalk: 

Can you see the sidewalk?

S in two countries at once

Although we didn't pick up on it until we entered France, our river route covered much of the Dreyland Dichter Weg (Three Countries Poets Path), featuring bronze-cast poems in the border-crossing language Allemannisch. You can hear Georges Zink's Karfukelstai in Allemannisch and read an English translation here...

...and the song S Gedanggeliedli vo däm wo hätt by Aernschd Born, sung and translated, here. The song ends with "He had a heart," leaving it to the reader/listener to fill in the audible blank that follows. (I'm going with "but did not love, and yet he was not...something..." thump thump, thump thump, thump thump...)

The Dreilaenderbruecke (Three Countries Bridge) connects Huningue, France, to Weil am Rhein, Germany. Switzerland is a mere 200m to the south on the east side of the river (to the right beyond the photo below). At the time of its construction in 2006, it was the longest pedestrian and bicycle arch bridge in the world.

Back in Switzerland, boom blooms.

Some photos of the Holzpark Klybeck (Klybeck Wood Park), a place for "creative ideas, urban wilderness, and dancing freedom" since 2014:

We crossed the Rhine again in Basel. The Mittlere Rheinbruecke (middle Rhine bridge) is the oldest bridge in Basel, and in the 15th-17th centuries, Christian zealots found it a convenient spot from which to toss chained-up scapegoats (a.k.a. witches) into the Rhine. In 2019, Basel erected an apologetic plaque ("Basel commemorates the people who were accused of witchcraft, persecuted, tortured and killed in previous centuries. Today, this is a place that reminds us to meet other people without prejudice and not to exclude them").

"Basel" sounds a lot like "Basilisk," but the names are probably unrelated. Once folks made the homophonic connection in the mid 15th century, Basilisk art caught on, and now they're hard to miss around town.

Things to do in Basel

Yesterday evening, to wrap up day two of the Countdown, we went back to the Eugen Keidel Thermal Mineralbad. It was just as swell the second time as the first. After more than two hours of swimming around in hot water, we felt well exercised and relaxed.

Today, we started working on the Oh-Shoot-We-Still-Need-to list by visiting Basel, Switzerland. Basel is located less than an hour away from Freiburg by car, a straight shot south on the Autobahn. Yet despite being so close for the past five months, today was the very first time we drove down to see the sights.

Here are some things I enjoyed doing today in Basel, in no particular order:

1. Sipping on a free sample of warm Weihnachtstee ("Christmas tea"). While the server watched me sip and patiently hoped to make a sale off of me, I awkwardly generated polite conversation by asking what the ingredients were. As a reward, I got to hear the long list of aromatic herbs and spices breathlessly and impressively recited in melodious Schwyzerdütsch. I understood most of the items on the list, if none of the parenthetical commentary, and enjoyed the delightful foray into the world of diphthongs and swishing consonants, all gratis along with the sample of tea.

2. Purchasing a bag of authentic Basler Läckerli at the Läckerli Huus. Basler Läckerli are Basel's version of lebkuchen. They're tough, chewy little rectangular cookies with just the right balance between nuts, spices, and Orangeat and Zitronat (candied orange and lemon peel). "Läckerli," of course, is the Swiss German diminutive noun form of "lecker," and means, essentially, "little yummy thangs." "Huus" is Schwyzerdütsch for "house," which is also a fun find for an easily amused nonnative speaker.

3. Following up on buying authentic Basler Läckerli in Basel by eating authentic Swiss fondue in Switzerland. We were rejected at the first, half-empty restaurant we entered, in theory because they were booked, but in practice, probably for not looking rich enough. At a second, thoroughly crowded establishment, we successfully squeezed into the corner by the coat rack. The fondue wasn't any better than what we make in our little fondue pot at home once every year or two, but my life is more complete for having tried the Real Thing.

4. Visiting the beautiful Basel Kunstmuseum (Art Museum), where we saw works by Klee, Miro, Picasso, van Gogh, Rousseau, Monet, Cézanne, Gauguin, Braques, Chagall, Calder, Pissaro, Rodin, Holbein, Breughel, Cranach, Dürer, Grünewald, Schongauer, Rubens, Rembrandt, Dali, Kandinsky, Marc, Giacometti, Böcklin, and many, many others. Elias and Zoe went gamely through all of the rooms with us and pretended to listen with interest to my and Michelle's non-stop lessons on art history.

5. Seeing a gold spray-painted mime on a cobblestoned pedestrian-zone shopping street taking a smoke break in a doorway. Not that I particularly enjoyed watching him smoke, just that I don't usually get to see metalicized street performers out of character.

6. Hearing eight organ grinders in succession in the Rathaus entryway. Stefan and I decided that if we ever buy a street organ, we'll go for a model by Josef Raffin in Ueberlingen--such charm, such sprightliness, such timbral variety!