24 hours in Basel,Switzerland

---

---

It had been a warm night and we couldn't have the window of the hotel room open because of the mosquitos that were out to get us!Still we both had a good nights sleep and Gretchen's injuries from the Chagny incident are improving all the time.

It was just a short run to Basel and then all we had to do was to find our way to D's apartment.

However,first we had to run the gauntlet of getting past a guy at the border who wanted to extract €40 from us for driving on Swiss highways.Fat chance he had considering we were only going to be in Switzerland for 24 hours and we did not intend on leaving the city of Basel which you enter as you leave the border and no need to drive on any of their highways.

The situation started with a slowing of the traffic as we got near the border and for the last couple of kilometres we crawled to the border of France and Switzerland.It is a weird situation really when the border is as open as elsewhere in Europe even though Switzerland is not an EU member.However,the traffic is slowed down to pass through a chicane to effectively slow traffic down for no particular reason.This gave the opportunity to a guy with a glow vest on to stand on one of the corners we had to pass through picking on cars he thought he could extract money from for a vignette.

He caught us by surprise as all the cars ahead of us with various country licence plates were waved through.However,our red plate must have looked a good target and stepped out in front of us and as we had our windows down in case we had to show our passports he quickly had his hand out and in a demanding way told us we had to pay €40 to drive on Swiss roads.At first we considered coughing up and then thankfully something clicked as we thought a bit more about how long we were going to be there and that we would not be driving on any highways.

We tried to get this across to him but he became more demanding.There was no way he looked official enough to pay €40 to and we had already noticed a separate notice showing where you can buy a vignette after you passed through the border.

After a couple of minutes of arguing and explaining that we were only visiting the city and would not be driving on highways,and with vehicles building up behind us and looking impatient,he shrugged his shoulders and waved us through.We will never know who he was or whether he was French or Swiss(we were in no mans land when he stepped out)but he didn't get anything from us!

The mysterious guy had thrown us a bit though because as we exited the border area we abandoned the GPS guide as we were fearful of getting ourselves onto a motorway when signs appeared in front of us.We ended up travelling three times the distance we needed to, to get to D's place and this after avoiding trams and a maze of short narrow streets.

After a catch up with D she took us out on a guided walk of Basel which included a very tasty lunch at the Movenpick Restaurant where we dined on a Swiss version of pizza which had the tastiest cheese we had had since we left NZ back in March,something we had been hanging out for.

We took a stroll around the town taking in some of the prominent buildings and then down to the Rhine River that runs through the centre of the city.

Here we watched something unique to Basel in the summer,locals floating down with the river current in their swimsuits and their street clothes tucked into a bag attached to them by a string.This way they had clothes to change into when they got to the part of the river where they had to get out,that is unless like some they went straight back to the start a couple of kilometres upstream and did it all again.There were dozens of people doing this of all ages and it was fun to watch.

Back home D cooked a delicious meal of bratworst with a salad and we enjoyed a restful evening with a glass or two of wine and good conversation.It has been a short visit to Switzerland and after nearly 5 months of our own company it was pleasurable to add a third person to it even if only for such a short time.

---