Basel und Zürich

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January 22nd 2012

Published: February 1st 2012

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Delek Delek

Grossmünster & Münsterbrucke

Oh yeah, and Davies & Corb.

There are some places I would never have heard of, let alone visited, if I wasn't a keen follower of European football.
La Coruña (home of the 2000 Spanish champions Deportivo La Coruña) is one of them, and perhaps Bremen (home of Werder Bremen) is another.
Therefore back in the early 2000s when I watched the likes of the Yakin brothers and er, Scott Chipperfield grace the Champions League, I told myself I'd have to visit Basel one day.
"Don't forget that one of the greatest people in the world is from there too", reminded my colleague Fabienne. Indeed Roger Federer, the greatest tennis player to ever play the game, is also from Basel.
"I meant me...", replied Fabienne.
The most compelling reason for me to visit the place however, was my good friend Corb who has been living there for the last nine months. The time had now come to visit this famous city.

I am now about to plug BMI, because they are awesome.
Despite only paying £70 for my return flight, BMI are a proper airline where you get to reserve a seat, get a free hot snack, free drinks, and free hold luggage as part of the

Zürich

From the university which is perched atop a hill looking over the city.

fare. The service was good and the blue and brown colour scheme was sharp, because as you know, the colour scheme inside the plane is the most important detail of an airline. None of that garish yellow or cheap orange.

Basel straddles the border of three different countries and this is apparent when you arrive at the airport, when the country you are going to determines which exit you take out of the building - how cool is that?
Perhaps Davies should have taken the French exit, as I looked on incredulously while he was escorted away by two security guards into a private office. WTF?
In the meantime, I walked into the arrival hall to see Corb who was as miffed as I was as to why Davies would have been taken in. Had he really been a drug trafficker or a terrorist the whole time I have known him?
After finally walking into the arrival hall after his cavity search, Davies says it was because he had a UK passport that was issued in New Zealand, and they wanted to have a closer inspection of it. Yeah right...

After dropping our stuff off and having a

View From Quaibrucke

Postcard!

beer at Corb's neat apartment by the bahnhof, he took us out for a couple of quiet drinks.
A ten-minute walk away and hidden away behind some old warehouses was the rather posh Acqua, where everyone in there turned their heads and gave us the once-over when we walked in. With house music, a dim disco ball and decked out with couches, this place was a pretty cool, laid-back joint with a bit of an older crowd. I took to the Feldschlossen beer I was drinking, which is made by Corb's company, Carlsberg, who you may have heard of - they do the best in the world, after all.
We then wanted to get into the rowdiest place in town which is of course, the town's Irish bar/pub/club, Paddy Reilly's. The queue was a bit long though - I never thought I'd ever queue for an Irish pub - so we instead had a drink at the English pub Mr Pickwick's, which I remember having a branch in Bern.
We then went back to Paddy Reilly's where we still had to queue, although not for as long as we would've before. We were still a bit annoyed at

Acqua

Funky, laid-back bar in Basel.

the girls who skipped the queue though.
"You girls aren't hot enough to skip the queue!", barked Corb. Brilliant.
One of the girls didn't exactly take kindly to it, so Davies took advantage of the situation to apologise and start up a conversation with her, who despite Corb's assertions, might actually have been hot enough to skip the queue - it was marginal.
It was pretty rammed inside and people were drunk and happy as the DJ was pumped out his top-40 jams. I got talking to local girl who hilariously spoke English with a Scottish accent. Patrizia explains to me that she lived in Edinburgh for six months and had obviously picked up the accent. It was quite funny - at times I had to speak in a Scottish accent so she could understand what I was saying.
She was a lovely girl though, good banter.
In the midst of everything, we ended up all losing each other. I managed to get back to Corb's flat OK, but Davies was lost in Basel somewhere. He got back OK eventually, but the fact that we all went to bed around 4am proves that there is no such thing as a

Fraumünster & St Peterskirche

Zürich's two famous churches. St Peterskirche, apparently has the largest clock-face in Europe.

quiet drink when you're on tour.

A bit tired and worse-for-wear the next morning, Corb brewed up some awesome hangover coffee that perked me up no-end before we all got onto a train to Zürich, only an hour away.
One of the world's richest financial hubs, Zürich may be pretty, clean, and boast some of the world's highest standards of living, but it doesn't really offer much to the the discerning tourist.
Alighting at the Zürich's bahnhof, we then walked down Bahnhofstrasse, the main shopping thoroughfare in town, passing all the expensive watch shops that don't have price tags on their items. As a friend of mine put it, "if you need to see the price tag, you shouldn't even be in the shop". This eventually leads us to the cobblestoned old quarter, with its cute, pastel-coloured buildings and bay windows.
Passing by the city's two main churches - St Peterskirche and the Fraumünster - and some charming courtyards, we get to the postcard part of town where the Limmat River passes under the bridge next to the twin-spired Grossmünster, and runs into Lake Zürich.
We then take a stroll around the lake while waiting to hear from an

Zürich Cake Shop

They take their cakes seriously here in Zürich. Those coloured things in the glass cabinet in the foreground are Zürich's famous Luxemburgli macaroons.

old school friend of ours, who is now living in Zürich.
We eventually meet our friend Sehej in Bellevueplatz, and we are starving. To address our hunger, Sehej takes us to place serving hot sausages and the St Galler Bratwurst I had was really nice, if not the bread roll that came with it, which was so hard on the outside, you could've killed a bird with it.
It has only been about three weeks since I last saw Sehej while skiing in Austria, but before then I don't think I had seen him since I left school. He seems happy enough and is doing well for himself in Switzerland, and he has also shaved off that ridiculous goatee that he used to sport at school.
Unfortunately, Sehej had some urgent costume shopping he had to do, so he left us at a cake shop in the middle of the old town.
The cake shops here in Zürich are something else, stocked with rich, expensive, high-calorie delicacies and housed in late-19th century-style shops. We ended up getting something akin to a brandy snap, filled with a white cream/icing which was carefully wrapped in a clear plastic sheet before being placed

Biology & Palaeontology Museum

Imagine you're taking a casual stroll through the forest and then you come across this motherfucker.

on a shiny, gold-lacquered paper plate and put inside a pink paper bag. Presentation is everything here in Zürich.
We then decided to walk up to the university which Fabienne told me had some great views over the city. The funicular that takes you up there closed at 2pm on Saturdays for some reason, so we took a walk up instead, which luckily wasn't too strenuous. The view is indeed a good one and the university buildings aren't too shabby either. Wanting to escape the cold, we walk into the free biological and palaeontology museum, which is full of fossils, stuffed animals and screaming children. Looking at the size of some of the ancient creatures, Corb says that he's quite glad that most of them are now extinct.
Having now spent three hours in Zürich, we then looked at each other regarding what to do next.
"Shall we just go back to Basel then?"
Not before we sampled the city's most famous culinary delicacy however - the Luxemburgli macaroon, where we bought a box of sixteen from the station. Don't get me wrong, it's a good macaroon, but I do think that it has been a wee bit overhyped.

Condomeria

It's exactly what you think it is.

The morning coffee had well and truly worn off on the train ride back to Basel and it's a good thing we woke up when we did, or else we would've ended up in Hamburg.
We then had a well-needed siesta back at Corb's before the night's festivities began.
One of Corb's colleagues was having a birthday party at a club that night and we took a tram over the river to one of his other colleague's house, for some pre-drinks. It was a pretty multicultural affair at the pre-drinks as the guests included two Russians, two Poles, an Italian, a Colombian, and a Slovenian, who all work at Carlsberg. There is quite the young ex-pat community living in Basel, and Corb has said that they all naturally gravitate to each other because they are pretty much all in the same boat.
It was then time to head back over the river to the club.
Hinterhof (which means 'backyard' in German) is another converted warehouse, and the place has a good vibe. It's retro/motown night tonight and there are even people rolling around on skates. The birthday girl tonight is Corb's colleague Ivana and I mingle with her friends who

Skatin' In The Hinterhof

A novel but dangerous idea.

are also from all over world including places as far as Holland, Russia and Vietnam. The Vietnamese girl Noc is a good laugh as we argued about whether Vietnam or Malaysia had the best food in world - she was a feisty one.
A few beers later and some of Ivana's friends rocked out the roller-skates, and it was a challenge I couldn't resist. The idea of free hire roller-skates inside a crowded, drunken night club is both an ingenious idea and an awful idea in equal measure. Thankfully my skating skills outweighed my drunkenness at the time, and I took the skates like a duck to water. Even managed to pull off a few smooth moves.
As for the rest of the night, I will sum it up in two vague points; love hexagon - it may even have been a love octagon at one stage - ridiculous; there are worse things than introducing yourself as Derek, and having the girls call you "McDreamy" for the rest of the night.
We finished off the night with a trip to the famous Stein Grill where I got myself some cevapcici which was then totally overpowered by the hot sauce I

The Rhine

Viewing platform from the Münster.

foolishly ordered to go with it.

The next day got off to an inauspicious start.
Corb had got food poisoning (steer clear of the communal peanut bowl at the bar people) and Davies had a bit of a kitchen calamity while cooking up breakfast.
Around 2pm, Corb managed to find the energy to take us on a tour of Basel.
Now I'll be honest - there isn't the greatest amount to see in Basel. The münster is a highlight as is the view looking over the Rhine from it. The Rathaus is nice, and Marktplatz is pleasant, and we ended our tour on the Mittlere Rheinbrucke, the only bridge for miles in the olden days that set Basel up as a trading town. Just as well it was a short tour, as Corb was stuffed - so we let him go back home to rest.
We wondered around the town for a bit longer, but the place was dead. Even cafes didn't seem to be open. In Basel, local by-laws mean that pretty much no business is allowed to take place on Sunday bar supermarkets and pubs. These archaic laws even stretch to the extent that people aren't even

Rathaus

Basel's striking town hall.

allowed to mow their lawns, do their washing, do this and do that on a Sunday. So on a day where you can't go out and actually do anything, you can't even catch up on the chores. Noc had even told Davies the other night that after certain hours, you can't even flush your toilet! Can you imagine being put away for flushing your toilet? Ridiculous. The Swiss are big on tradition, which is nice to see, but surely some things just have to move with the times.
During our walk of the city, we then managed to stumble upon Mr Pickwick's again, where we caught the second half of the City-Spurs game. Spurs came back brilliantly from 2-0 down and Jermain Defoe should've won the match in injury time, only for City to go up the other end and get themselves a penalty to win the game themselves - scored by Mario Balotelli who should've been sent off earlier in the game for a stamp on Scott Parker's head. All I have to say is that City are jammy fuckers. Didn't improve the hungover mood.
We then went back to Corb's to pick up our bags and say goodbye,

Inside The Rathaus

Inside the rathaus is a statue of the Roman senator Munatius Plancus.

before heading to the airport where we hoped there would be a bar or something showing the Arsenal-United game. We were out of luck unfortunately, which pretty much summed up the day.

Overall, I found Basel was pretty unremarkable as a city. Having lived in London, I definitely found it a bit too small, although at the same time, it does have a laid-back and unpretentious vibe.
Zürich seemed to have more happening and is definitely liveable, although the place did reek of affluence and snootiness.
Summer is apparently the best time to visit Basel, so I think I'd definitely like to come again during the surprisingly hot summers, if Corb is still there.
Big up to Corb for entertaining and putting up with us - laughs are always guaranteed with Corb, top bloke.

In my last blog entry I had told you all that I wouldn't know where my next entry would be coming from - well you didn't have to wait too long and I have some exciting travel plans for this year involving a lot more short trips like the ones I used to do a couple of years ago.
The next entry will be