Basel, Switzerland 🇨🇭

Murlayna Travel: Yerp 2016

Thursday, July 28

Before meeting up with Laynie I had a bit of train travel on my own, but I’ll skip over that and just get to the good stuff.

Also please forgive the skitzo tense changes as this was written all over the place, literally. Occasionally Elayna even ghostwrites from my perspective. Hope you stick with it long enough for us to hit our stride :)

Friday, July 29

Upon my arrival in Basel, I walked from the Bad Bf station (technically Germany, although it’s completely surrounded by Switzerland) past the main Convention Centre (which is beautifully architected, as is everything in Europe).

Laynie soon met me at my hotel (the Rheinfelderhof) as she was busy with Tattoo commitments up until that point. My room was literally just a single bed and a bathroom. Brand new and renovated/upscale, but only three single beds wide and an extra couple feet long all encompassing!

We went to her hotel (the Basilisk), so I could see it (I couldn’t book a stay since there’s a no-boys-in-rooms policy 😏), then we walked around town a bit.

We were looking for the lady she needed to talk to to get my meal card. Eventually she got instructions from her via text message and we went and picked it up, then had pasta bolognese, delicious butter-drenched veggies, and salad at the meal hall.

I napped while she danced her nightly show, then the girls (Laynie’s roommate/wifey Emma and crew) went to the cast bar while I continued my slumber at the Basilisk. Mmm, jet lag.

They returned at 04:00 (not too drunk tonight) and I reminded them they should get pizza from the nearby legendary drunken-food joint: Star Grill. We spilt pizza grease on the bedsheets before passing out together. 🍕

Saturday, July 30

First thing Saturday we headed down to the Rhine some couple blocks away, and jumped in for a float. The water is clean enough that you won’t die if you swim in it; I got some in my mouth, even. It’s a pretty easy float as the current is strong — all you have to do is make sure you get close to shore when you want to get out or else you’ll end up in the North Sea.

Once dried off we returned home for lunch at the meal hall. I napped while the girls went to Children’s Day and cavorted about with local Swiss kids in exchange for free Popsicles.

There are fountains everywhere in Basel, all of which stream delicious drinkable water all the time. (Seriously the water was so tasty.) They are constantly flowing so you simply plop your water bottle under to fill up and go!

Laynie danced the matinee show then I met her in the meal hall for a quick dinner as she was due back on stage later that evening, and I was attending the show too.

I watched from insider-acquired seats surrounded by what seemed like mostly Swiss/locals; the performance was filled with interesting military formations from Tokyo to Finland — accentuated by fireworks and castle-projected backgrounds.

Japanese criss-crossing and hoverboard-propelled Swiss “Top Secret Jubilee Corps” were the runaway crowd favorites, but the CanCelt ladies’ undulating wave shapes and cute sailor outfits were big hits too.

Cast bar later that night. We left our room at midnight after powering through some energy drinks and a couple beers, then the girls accidentally took over the stage in an impromptu rendition of their dance over the energetic live rock band and surprise guest bagpiper. There was a hookah on site, cheap beer and food available, and it was a super friendly crowd owing to how diverse the languages/cultures being intermingled were. Elayna and her friends were all pretty sentimental as it was their last night together, so they took billions of selfies to commemorate the tattoo experience and capped it all off with a 🍾 toast with the entire CanCelt team.

We left at 05:00 and went for pizza at Star Grill, of course, not that any of us were particularly plastered (since most had to leave early that morning and wouldn’t have time to sleep at all). Here it is — glorious, proud — in the daytime:

Sunday, July 31

Sunday fun-day: we slept all day. I was still getting over jet lag and Laynie was getting over two weeks of dancing herself into the ground with no sleep. We finally emerged from our stupor at 15:30 to find something to eat. We hiked around Basel’s main streets, briefly pausing at one of the endlessly cool local art installations with various fountains streams in motion.

We eventually settled on some sandwiches and salads from a local grocery store, which we took back to the Rhine’s edge to devour.

We’d planned to go to the triple-country-border that afternoon but another ‘short nap’ left us incapacitated until sunset. When we woke at 20:30, we decided to go anyway (they use the 24-hour clock here, which I realized I actually love because it’s so terse and communicative — hence why I’m using it throughout), so we took the local tram north for 20 minutes (we both had free access for the duration of the tattoo with our cast lanyards) and walked around a slumbering little town in France

…only to realize that the few remaining eateries were closing. We saw a cool outdoor/public bouldering wall along the way though.

Naturally we were drawn back to the Star Grill for two gigantic and delicious donairs (with fries in them!).

We knew there would be a fireworks show later that evening for Switzerland’s birthday, so we went down to the Rhine to fight the mobs for a good spot to watch from. It’s was 20 solid minutes of chaotic, soaring brilliance that was super fun and powerful to watch. After (like before) the amateurs resumed and started shooting their own fireworks off again until sunrise (no word of a lie, these gunshot-loud bangers went off every 15 minutes or so all evening and night all three days of the weekend, right outside our window. It was fucking crazy and clearly the police and residents didn’t care/expected this. We couldn’t help but laugh even when we were shocked awake in the middle of the night.)

Monday, August 1

Monday morning we had breakfast at the Baselisk (the most amazing buns, jams, cheese and meat) then spent twenty minutes deciding how to spend our last couple Swiss francs. Mars bar in hand, we took to the Rhine and sat/watched/chilled with our feet in the water for an hour or so.

We checked out (Us: “Are we good to go?”, Luca: “I dunno, do you have to pay? You were here for an extra night?” Us: “Maybe. But I think we’re good.” “Okay, you are good then!”) and marched to the train station.

Having scoped out our itinerary the night before on the hotel wifi, I opted to buy the tickets in person since there was no discount for not doing so and I would then be able to buy everything all at once instead of in multiple mini-itineraries, but when we got the station no one working there spoke English… (This in itself was pretty odd — everyone we had met so far had spoken English so we were surprised, to say the least, and even more so when they were outrageously flippant towards us.) I had to hop on the shitty wifi there and buy it all on the fly; somehow, though, we got on the train sweating with 1 minute to spare! Naturally, they didn’t even end up checking our tickets…

Outro

Obviously this is only the first of many posts to come. It’s also over a week past due. But I will try to get the rest posted quickly in order to catch up. Next up: Munich!