Welcome to more impressions of my visit to the beautiful city of Basel in Switzerland in July 2020. Visiting a city for a job might sound like a great opportunity to enjoy it, but pretty often it’s just Airport-Hotel-Venue-Hotel-Venue-Hotel-Airport, you get the point. This time we were lucky and had a day off and the weather was just perfect so we could go out and about to enjoy Basel with some summertime vibes.
Let’s Start our Summer in the City Day Out
Since the Rhine river runs right through Basel and considering the warm and sunny weather we thought water would be a good first destination, but right after leaving the hotel, just a few meters down the street towards the river, the first unexpected architectural attraction showed up.
Yes, unexpected, because you can’t see this from a distance.
This is kind of a big hole in the ceiling, between the Event Hall and the Congress Center Basel, with a passage underneath.
Thinking about how to put that “hole” somehow into photographic context one of my fellow colleagues had the great idea of a vertical panorama and i really had to bend a lot for that shot. Don’t fall over while watching this! 😉
On the bottom part of the shot you see the hotel were we started and on the top part there’s the street down to the river where we’re heading.
Down by the River
Next up we reached the Rhine river at the Middle Rhinebridge (German: Mittlere Rheinbrücke) where lots of people were enjoying their coffee or beer and snacks at the riverside.
As we are already here at that beautiful 100 year old Middle Rhinebridge, i've got an interesting detail of the bridge for you. The bridge itself is not the original, it was rebuilt around 1900 and in the middle of it there is something called the “Käppelijoch”, a little chapel that has been rebuild, too. Here, they threw “witches” in the river to drown them back in the middle ages. Nowadays it seems to be more like a lover’s meeting place considering all the love locks on the door bars. Notice the beautifully coloured roof tiles, you’ll see more of them later on the Basel Minster which you can already spot here behind the chapel on the right.
Moving on to another bridge, the Wettsteinbridge. In the foreground you have the typical boats that are to be found underneath almost every bridge here and in the background there is the Basel Minster (German: Basler Münster). It is one of the main landmarks of Basel.
The Basel Minster is built with red sandstone, it has two nice elegant thin towers and the same beautifully coloured roof tiles, like we’ve already seen up close on the roof of the “Käppelijoch”.
☀️ Ok, enough summer in the city chillin’ down by the river! ☀️
Let’s go and stroll through some streets now and have a look what else there is to see in beautiful Basel.
I love those little cosy alleys with their picturesque views like this one right here. This might look pretty tight, but go on and see what i found in this alley to the right and left, maybe you can figure out what belongs where.
First there was this fairy tale or middle earth like yard that reminded me of some kind of monastery, but in fact was the Public Record Office (German: Staatsarchiv) of Basel.
Next up was that beatiful cobblestone yard with it’s somehow strangely twisted roof. Where is my wideangle lens?!
This building is called the “Reichensteinerhof” or “The Blue House” and was originally built as business house and home for a silk manufacturer named Jakob Sarasin. There’s a second one that is called the “White House” or “Wendelstörferhof” built for his brother Lukas, but i just took a shot of the blue one, because the yard of the White House was full of trash and not an attractive motif that day.
Puuh, i’m thirsty now, aren’t you?
Ok, let’s find one the hundreds of nicely designed drinking water wells spread over Basel and have a good mouthful of fresh and tasty water, yes it’s really good enjoyable water. If i had the time i would go through Basel just to shoot a special photo series of all those beautiful wells. Look out for them when you visit Basel and bring your own water bottle to save some bucks and keep the streets clean!
Feeling refreshed? Good, me too! Let’s move on, i have another cool water thingy to show you, but first we get ourselves a little snack in of the very thin houses of Basel, the Sutter Bakery. Isn’t this cute?! The shop’s size is only about 20 square meters on the inside.
And now we make a snack pause here at the so called “Fasnachtsbrunnen” or “Tinguely Fountain” with 10 great moving and water spitting sculptures designed by swiss kinetic artist Jean Tinguely located at the Theatre Square.
Guess my first thoughts, sunshine + water fountains = 🤔 there must be an angle for ... YES! Rainbows all over the place 🌈 Here i caught a nice one for you to enjoy.
What a nice picturesque city so far, don’t you think? Are you still with me? Great, then let’s go see the last great sight before sunset at the other end of Basel, the Three Border Triangle. It’s a bit further away so we have to take a tram.
On the way to the tram station we found this piece of street art and after all those colourful sights of Basel i thought it’s best to show this in a monochromatic fashion for a change. Those shadow creatures are not painted on the wall, they are made of metal plates.
While waiting for the tram i saw a vending machine next to the station and discovered this compilation of products in one of the shelves. Zoom in and make up your own story about this 😜 The tram has arrived, let’s jump in and off we go to ...
... the Three Border Triangle (German: Dreiländereck) of Switzerland, France and Germany with an interesting rocket like sculpture. A perfect motif for the new vertical panorama technique i just learned at the Event Hall hole. Here i’m standing on the swiss side of the triangle.
Now i’m on the french side of the triangle and guess what, my phone immediately connected to a french mobile provider and i got a message about roaming fees in france.
On the photo you can see a glimpse of a big terrace right behind the sculpture on the right. That’s a nice bar where we had some good cold drinks before we called it a day and went back to the hotel, but wait, since you came along with us all the way to here you earned to see ...
...one more thing!
Back at the Event Hall underneath the big hole i wanted to get another wideangle shot with my dslr camera, but my compañeros decided to photobomb the shot and even gave me an unvoluntary selfie as a present.
Still here? Great!
I hope you enjoyed our little summer in the city day out and that you could catch a little of the feeling of the picturesque city of Basel from it.
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