Basel

One of the things I wanted to do before I left Germany was visit Switzerland. As it's only an hour away this was fairly feasible and so I got to visit the 3rd country of this trip. Here are some highlights of our slightly rainy but nonetheless fun trip.

1) Old Buildings, Old Streets- The buildings in Basel are all very old and very impressive. On top of this they are all fit into streets that are very narrow (except for the main streets). Most of these streets are not made for cars and often are steep enough to even have stairs between the buildings. I am somewhat interested in how they made it work inside the buildings or if inside everyone's house is just slanted...

2) Stuff Is Expensive- Before we arrived I had been warned by the Pruckers that everything in Basel, and Switzerland in general, is very expensive. I did not find this to be the case overall so much. Most stuff was possibly a bit more expensive than in Germany, and this was compounded by the Swiss Franc being roughly equal to the US Dollar and therefore a bigger number than in Euros. However some things were very expensive. For example at the doll house museum there was a teddy bear, a very small teddy bear, maybe 4 inches tall, that was even raggedy looking, that cost $500. I don't know what this teddy bear could do, presumably make me breakfast and do my homework, but for 500 bucks it better be damn impressive. Similarly, there were some very impressively priced watches as is expected in Switzerland. And then there were some incomprhensibly priced watches. The most expensive one I found (and yes I did quite a bit of window hunting) was listed at $13999. And no that's not a typo. This watch cost more than some new cars!?!? How could this be. It looked cool I guess, and expensive and classy and all that, but it tells time, and thats all! I don't even know if it was waterproof... Maybe the trick is that it opens up into a transformer and can save the world from bad guys I don't know but there must be something quite stupendous going on with this watch and one day I'm going to find out what!

3) The Bathrooms Look Like Banks- After touring the cathedral we took a quick family pit stop. One of the things Switzerland is famous for other than chocolate, watches and knives is their banks. Apparently they model their public bathrooms after their banks as well. After showing proper identification (a Franc) the door to the vault/bathroom unlocks and you may enter. The door to this vault appears to be solid metal 3 inches thick with a steel handle. The inside as well looked somewhat like a vault with much of it being made of steel. Despite all of these security features we found a way to break in, simply by pulling on the handle... The door opened and the entire family was able to use the bathroom free of charge. Hopefully though similar in looks the banks would have somewhat better security.