|
|
|
train to Basel
Tuesday, November 4 2025
location: Room 211, Hotel Adler, Zürich, Switzerland
I didn't sleep great last night. At some point I woke up and couldn't get back to sleep, mostly because I was thinking about the circumstances of how I got fired. I'd been a terrible employee, but that had been a terrible place to work. I think something in me made me want to lose that job. But it still hurts to be fired, and it takes awhile for the psychological trauma of that experience to heal.
We didn't have to check out of our hotel until noon, which later proved to be a common (and very civilized) checkout time in Switzerland. As we were checking out, the nice woman at the desk asked us where we were going next and Gretchen said Basel. She noted that Basel is "shabbier" than Zürich, whatever that means, and this became an idea I immediately latched onto, to the eventual annoyance of Gretchen. (She inevitably has to tell me to stop when something like this gets lodged in my brain.)
From the hotel, we walked to the nearby train station and eventually had to go to the info desk to find out how to catch a train to Basel. When we paid for our tickets, we saw there was an option to pay half price. We assumed this might be for senior citizens or something, which we can now plausibly pass for. So we picked that option. We then found our way to an all-vegan bakery n the train station called Bakery Bakery and got lot of things to eat, including a number of savory sandwiches. I also got an oat milk cappuccino of course.
When we got on the train, it wasn't immediately obvious we were on the right car. The trains have different classes, and this one had the number "1" on the seats, suggesting this might be a first-class car. When Gretchen tried to ask someone if this was the right car, some woman growled at her that this was the quiet car, "So shut up!" That seemed unnecessarily rude. So we left that car and eventually found one that seemed correct.
Then a no-nonsense ticket inspector came through and had a look at our tickets. When she saw they were half price, she wanted to see our medical card. Obviously, we didn't have one. So then she said that we only had one ticket and needed two. "Can we buy one now?" Gretchen asked. It turned out we could, though it would be more expensive than it would've been had we bought it in the station. That was easy enough to do. And if one doesn't probe the limits of a system, one often pays a premium. For all the money we've saved probing those limits, the extra we had to pay was well worth it.
The train to Basel took about an hour, passing through various villages and countryside (and a few tunnels here and there). Once we got to the Basel train station, Gretchen asked someone how best to get to our hotel, and we were directed to a local tram, which we rode without paying (a trick we always seem to get away with, though I was once busted for doing this in San Diego). We got off the tram one stop early so we could cross the Rhine on foot via a beautiful old bridge that even had a peaked turret.
Our hotel for the night in Basel would be the Hotel Krafft, and when we checked in, we were told we'd been upgraded to a penthouse suite. It overlooked a construction site, which we'd been warned about. But it turned out that the stage of construction that the site was in was not producing noises any louder than the gentle whirring of a crane's cable system (and the cawing of crows alighting on the crane in the early morning). Our upgraded suite yet again included a bathtub. The room also came with a Nespresso machine, whose waste product (coffee grounds mixed with aluminum) skeeved us out even if the espresso shots it produced were top-notch.
After we'd settled in, we went off to do all the things Gretchen likes to do in a city, which today meant museums. The first museum we went to was the Museum Tinguely, which features the kinetic sculptures of Jean Tinguely. I love kinetic art, particularly the kind that makes sound or produces complex motion using gears or pulleys, and Tinguely's art has aspects of all of this. He has fragile hand-made gear systems made entirely of wire carefully welded and bent into gears, and he as other bulkier structures featuring random pieces of junk hinged and belted together to make interesting movements. One particularly large work featured discarded pieces of midway rides that one could actually climb through via a set of stairs and a catwalks. This was in a large room with several such large works, each of which were on a timer so that they would come alive at various times while not running so much that they would quickly wear out. (On one of his sculptures featuring hammers lifted and released to strike various sound-making objects, I could see a deep groove worn in the metal of a prong used to do the lifting. In another room with smaller sculptures, there were pedals that could be pressed to make the sculptures comes to life, but they would only do so after a considerable refractory period, after which a light would turn green inviting whatever viewer happened by to stomp it back to life. As an artist (or, as least, as someone who likes to make things), I found this museum a good source of inspiration.
The bulk of this particularly European adventure would be spent aboard a vegan river boat traveling down the Rhine from Basel to Amsterdam, and we'd be doing this with, among others, our friends Kelly and Brian from Scotland (whom we first met on the Danube cruise and who have visited us twice in Upstate New York). Since Kelly and Brian were already in Basel, we met them this evening at the Kunstmuseum at 5pm, when it is open for free to the public for an hour. The Kunstmuseum features a fair number of masterpieces from the late 19th and early 20th Centuries. There is, for example, a whole room full of classic cubist paintings by Picasso and Braque that I remember well from my mother's big art history book, which I pored over as a kid. (When I was little, I was especially drawn to medieval depictions of the crucifixion, though by the time I was a teen I'd developed an appreciation for relatively modern art.) It was great to see all this familiar art, as well other less familiar works by familiar artists like Yves Tanguy. There was also a Salvador Dali featuring a human with a set of pull-out drawers on a leg, and it didn't even look skillfully painted.
After rushing through the museum to see all the things we wanted to see, the four of us walked to a bustling vegetarian buffet restaurant called Tibits. Like our meal yesterday, we paid for the the buffet food by weight. I also drank two beers. After being disappointed by what amounted to a fairly bland lager, I tried a different beer not knowing what it was and then saw the drink guy inject some sort of syrup into what would've otherwise been another boring light golden lager. The result was decidedly cloying to my palate, but I'd paid a lot of money for it, so I drank the damn thing. Over food, we had a nice rolicking conversation about the upcoming cruise, with a focus on an annoying guy named River who will be on the cruise and whom Kelly and Brian will want to avoid, as he is a very poor listener.
A sign about Bitcoin in front of the main train station in Zürich this morning. Click to enlarge.
A delicate kinetic wire sculpture by Jean Tinguely. Click to enlarge.
A gloomy sculpture by Jean Tinguely. Click to enlarge.
Jean Tinguely's big sculpture made with fairway junk. Click to enlarge.
A water wheel powering an old paper mill in Basel. Click to enlarge.
A painting in the Kunstmuseum. Click to enlarge.
Gretchen looking at a painting by the Swiss artist Paul Klee in the Kunstmuseum. She loves Paul Klee. Click to enlarge.
A sculpture by the Swiss artist Albert Müller in the Kunstmuseum. Click to enlarge.
Gretchen with a large painting in the entrance to the Kunstmuseum. Click to enlarge.
We strolled past the Rathaus after the museum. Click to enlarge.
For linking purposes this article's URL is:
http://asecular.com/blog.php?251104 feedback
previous | next |
