So We Just Popped Over To France For Dinner

On our Idyllic Cow Tour of Switzerland last summer, Basel was one of the few cities we didn't get to. But the point wasn't to see if the industrial cows of Basel were just as idyllic as their Alpine cousins, but to visit Mel and Steve (and their kids Alex, Felicity, Amelia) - recent Aussie expats to Basel. (Steph and Mel worked together at Employers Mutual in Sydney.)

Being the total atlas-geek that I am I love the fact that Basel is on border of 3 countries - Switzerland, Germany and France. It took us about 7 hours to chase the setting sun across the length of the Czech Republic and Germany, and then right at the end we just popped down into Switzerland and arrived at Mel & Steve's 10 minutes later. We had arrived after dark, and despite being experienced northerners of 2 European winters now, we were still surprised and excited to discover a layer of snow over everything the next morning. And such a nice excuse to go for a walk in the pretty forest behind their house

We'd been warned that Basel (an industrial city) might not be as beautiful as many others in Switzerland, but when Mel took us on a whirlwind tour of city that afternoon we were pleasantly surprised. OK, it wasn't Bern or Lucerne but definitely had it's high points: the Munster (Cathedral), the Rat Haus (Town Hall - rather appropriately named I think) and the Markplatz with their sundried tomatoes (refer to previous blog on getting fat in Australia). The coolest thing though was the Tinguely Fountain. I've decided that Swiss cities can be summed up by their fountains... Bern had it's medieval baby-eating ogre fountain, Lucerne has it's majestic fountain reminiscent of the tall white Alps and Basel of course had the totally industrial Tinguely Fountain: a series of crazy machines sitting in a shallow pool and spurting our water from all sorts of pipes and hoses. Despite being absolutely covered in icicles it was still pumping out volumes of water with true Swiss efficiency.

The public transport was pretty impressive as well. Yes, most public transport is impressive compared with Sydney, however it was impressive that even in the suburbs there were such good connections. Possibly even more impressive than the public transport was Alex's (a four year old who doesn't speak German mind you) ability to list the full line of tram stops in order, and in fact tell you which tram to catch and where to change for different destinations! Very impressive

Saturday night we decided to just pop over to France for dinner (yes, I do like saying that), to a cute little French village pub about 10 minutes from Basel. Steve stayed home with the kids while Mel came with us - when we arrived we realised it was Valentines Day and most tables had been set up in pairs, but we were happy to have a party of 3.5 people . And despite being in France, I think there was more German spoken there - just to confuse things a little more. Why do all the Polish, French and Czech border towns speak German? Why don't the ones just inside of Germany speak French, Polish and Czech???

On Sunday we took a slight detour home, following the Rhine north along the French/German border, with the aim of spending time in Colmar and Strasbourg. "Colmar is typically and whimsically Alsatian with crooked houses, half timbered and painted, on crooked lanes". (Stolen from tourist brochure... clearly I would never describe anything with the word 'whimsically' of my own initiative...). Although since it was a Sunday all the shops were closed and there were hardly any people out, making this whimsically Alsatian town a little spooky... even the church was closed! The next stop was meant to be Strasbourg (for lunch) but on the way out of Colmar, Steph kept seeing what looked like a little city on top of a mountain. Eventually curiosity got the better of us, and we pulled off the highway in search of something we didn't know, in a place we weren't sure of (sounds like the start of a song writing career I think) . What the hey, it's been a while since we got randomly lost on a foreign wild goose chase.

Luck was with us it seemed (although I suppose it's pretty hard to lose a mountain) and after winding through a little French country side and a town called St Hippopotamusville (or something to that effect) we found Château du Haut-Kœnigsbourg. Not a city, but a giant castle built sometime shortly after 1000 AD. Being high on the mountain meant it was covered in snow and I guess it helped make it even prettier, but it's just really fun when you 'discover' something so unexpectedly We must have used all our luck up finding the mountain château, because Strasbourg was a comedy of errors.

We were trying to park as close as possible to the old town, but ending up doing widening concentric circles around it, then gave up and drove down the canal, turned right and amazingly found a park on the street behind the hospital & university. All we had to do was walk back to the canal and then down to the town. It was as we took a shortcut through the hospital that we somehow must have got disoriented, found the wrong canal and walked in the wrong direction down it. When no town presented itself after about 25 minutes we turned off the canal, walked down another street and lo and behold, there in front of us was our car. What the?!? Feeling we'd walked enough we got back into the car and drove again, this time finding the perfect park where we had started. By the time we stopped for 'lunch' the sun was setting, but the sun-dried tomatoes, cheese and baguette we had brought all the way from Basel still went down well. Strasbourg was maybe even more picturesque than Colmar - probably made even more whimsical because of the canals that divided all the medieval buildings. And so eventually we began the 6 hour trip back to Prague - our last long drive before P-day ;)

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