The River Rhine 2009

Day 2 - Aug 03 - Basel, Switzerland

In the morning we always do a tour. If you look very closely you can see that the girl on the right in the red has a microphone. We have receivers so that we can hear from a distance. There are four groups, each with their own receiver.

Our guide this day was overly dramatic and verbose. She would go on and on about a single thing until she had killed it. It was tiresome. By the end of the day, at the art museum, some of us just wandered away. We only had 45 minutes in the museum and she would spend 10 minutes on one picture.

Examples of things the guide DIDN'T talk about? How about the patterned roof on the cathedral (click for close up)? Also notice the white tents at the bottom of the cathedral. The streets were being dug up to place a new water pipe. I knew that there's history below the streets and I (and a few people around me) notice horizontal marble block (probably for support) under the road and part of an old wall. That would have been interesting for her to talk about.

These figures are supposed to be elephants (click picture for closer view). Our guide took ten minutes to tell us an interesting 2 minute story about why they are so strangely carved. Charlemagne had been given an elephant by the Maharaja of India, which died within a month, due to the cold climate (supposedly). The emperor commanded elephants to be drawn and carved around his realm. The artists, of course, had never seen an elephant. We would have done no better, except we have been to the zoo or seen pictures, not just heard stories.

 

Narrow street near the cathedral.

At the end of it is a narrow, steep staircase going up to the left known as the road of the 11,000 virgins. I would retell the story, but I got rather lost during the diatribe.

 

 

Notice the clock dial. We are taught that the Roman number 4 is IV, 5 minus 1. But the people of Europe in the dark ages were not educated. They didn't do subtraction. The dial does 4 as IIII - which is your four fingers straight up. OK - but the dial has 9 as IX, as seeming contradiction. I took me a while to figure this out, but I think it is very simple: VIIII is too big to fit into the space.

During the tour we had a half hour to wander the shops around the market. It was raining. First we took shelter in a building and covered up Denece's expensive camera. We did wander thru the market, but it was very unimpressive.

We ended up in the Globus store delicatessen. Dad's not very adventurous, but was willing to try what I bought. I don't know exactly what it was, but it was a piece of roast beef around a sausage or wurst filling. The other stuff is spelzel (or something), which is a German starch, which seemed to me to be dumpling pieces. We both enjoyed it. Only problem, of course, is one more meal in a very food-filled trip.

 

After lunch Dad and I were going to take the tram (train) back downtown, but we came across a couple that had walked the 30 minutes back to the ship. Dad was game, so we hiked it. He did a great job!

Navigation was a breeze, since Old Town is right along the river! Along the way we came across these gentlemen engrossed in a game of Bacchi ball. (Hope I spelled that right.)

Just as Denece and I found in Munich the last time we were in Europe, music stores are not like in the US. The salesman told us that they have a small selection: only one of each. In the US stores have a lot of guitars and pianos, but never such a variety of ancillary instruments. They even had a selection of harmonicas, including a bass harmonica, which was about a foot long.
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We just wandered around Basel, including an unsuccessful attempt to break a 50 Euro bill. We stumbled on this water park, which has a number of mechanical water sculptures.
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This one has two "scoopers" pushing the water.
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Not sure which cathedral this is. It wasn't open, unfortuanately. Yet, notice the contrast of the glass pyramids in front. I think the pyramids are like for the Louve in Paris - they provide lighting for some museum underneath.