Rambling along the Rhine

As I had done each day in Basel, I lit out early for coffee and to pick up a loaf of fresh bread for breakfast. Our plan for the day was to explore Basel with Billy, walk his old paths and see his old haunts. 

The first stop was the Jean Tinguely museum, one of the 40 or so museums that are sprinkled throughout Basel. Tinguely was one of Basel's native sons, and a major contributor to the modern art movement beginning in the early 1960s. Most noteworthy are his moving assemblies made of random found pieces of metal, bone, and household items. Most are motorized and when acitvated they spin, oscillate and clang away. Tinguely made his first big splash in 1960 at MOMA by installing one of his contraptions that when activated spun , oscillated, clanged and after about 30 minutes destroyed itself - according to his intention. He collaborated extensively with Rauschenberg, and their work was featured at the museum during our visit. 

Stimulated, and enervated, (modern art does that to you), we walked out and down to the Rhine, inside the horseshoe that frames Klein Basel. 

It was our time to take the full Billy Tour, and he was a great guide. It was a whirlwind, though, and before we knew it, it was time to take the tram back to Betsy's and zip up the suitcases.

Betsy and Billy dropped us at the Basel train station, and we were on our way to Frankfurt for our last night before flying back. We rode the ICE and had a compartment to ourselves for 2 1/2 of the 3 hours, which gave us time to reflect and talk about the wonders we had seen, how much we had done, and what an indescribably perfect trip we had. Betsy was a hostess of incredible grace and hospitality, Billy a colorful and knowledgeable tour guide, and the people we met up and down the Rhine in Germany, Switzerland and France unforgettable.



Thank you grandparents for taking care of the boys and giving us this opportunity!

Epilogue

1. Frankfurt Main train station is very nice. It is one of the primary gateways to Germany, and does it in style.

2. Airport hotels are best booked if you need a place to lay your head if your flight is cancelled, and nothing else.

3. Always arrive two hours early for international flights in case someone leaves a suitcase unattended and the portion of the terminal that leads to your gate gets cordoned off by machine-gun toting polizei until the bag is disposed of.

4. Boeing 747 is better than Airbus 330.

5. It's great to be home!

A High Point

Thursday morning we left Basel under light cloud cover with Betsy driving us south towards the Bernese Alps and to Interlocken, a town situated on a narrow isthmus between two magnificent azure and emerald lakes, the Thuner See and the Brienzer See, that fill a gorge that must be a thousand feet deep. Interlocken sits like a  postcard alpine town at the base of the mountains. Ski shops, Grande Epoque hotels and typical Swiss chalets line the narrow streets. We could see mountains that were clearly pretty big, but the highest peaks were shrouded in clouds. The sun peaked through in places, so Billy insisted that we go ahead with our plan to visit Murren, elevation approximately 5400 feet above sea level. 

To say the landscape is dramatic there epitomizes the saying that "words just can't do it justice." Even pictures can't convey the sheer slopes, the rocky crags, the gorges, the twisted rock faces where the granite undulates under the pressure of the earth's plates meeting and pressing the surface skyward to ten and fifteen thousand feet high. Swiss cows on the roadside, sheep grazing in green meadows, timber chalets perched in places that only goats could reach - every view was a picture.

We parked at the Lauterbrunnen train station where we boarded a cable car for the 60-degree ascent. As we rode up the mountain, the sun peeked through more and more, and as we stepped off the cable car to board the train to Murren, the temperature at around 0 Celsius and a brisk wind gave us a nice wakeup. 

The little train to the final stop at Murren took only a few minutes, and we arrived at the treeline of what seemed like the top of the world - until we looked over our shoulder at the Eiger, the Jungfrau, and the Monsch (the "ogre," the "girl" and the "monk") across the gorge. It was a stirring sight. 

The little town of Murren is seasonal for hiking and skiing, and we hit more or less between the two. The residents all own or work in shops and hotels, and there wasn't a lot of activity during mid-October. That meant that there were fewer tourists, and we had the place to ourselves as much as we could have. 

A little restaurant promised a warm place to sit and a warm plate of food, so we ate the Swiss classic rosti, a pile of hashbrowned potatoes, topped with a sunny-side up egg. Duly fortified, we walked around the town, did a little shopping, and took lots of pictures before it was time to go back to the train. 

After an uneventful ride back to Basel, Betsy treated us to dinner at the BIS Sports Club, a private swimming, tennis and dining establishment offered to employees of the Bank. The most incredible landscapes we had ever seen - the lakes surrounded by those rugged peaks, plus a day of walking and Alpine air put us in bed early Thursday night - 10 PM.

More Alps pictures here:

http://picasaweb.google.com/pres.nowlin/Switzerland#

Un jour a l'Alsace

I awoke early on Wednesday morning in Basel,  so I set out on foot in search of a cup of coffee and a loaf of bread for breakfast. We ate heartily, showered and piled into Betsy's Audi for a trip into fairy-tale-land. Judy had told Billy she wanted to see a castle and and old village - mission accomplished. 

We drove out of Basel and up into the Alsace wine region, just west of the Rhine River. The city quickly gave way to farmland, then to vineyards mile after mile, covering the eastern slopes of the Vosges Mountains. We exited the highway into the little town of St. Hyppolyte, the very picture of an old French village, and drove up into the mountains to Haut Konigsburg, an old Hapsburg castle that was faithfully restored in the early 1900s.  

The castle sits atop the highest peak around, and the views were magnificent. It's hard enough to imagine building it in the 20th century, much less the 14th and 15th. Pillaged and burned several times over the centuries, it looks impregnable. 

The outside temperature was around freezing and the wind was blowing, which hinted at what a brutal existence people lived at the time the castle was built. Fortunately, we had a car with heated seats to take us back down the mountain and over to the town of Riquewihr, perhaps the most well-known of the medieval Alsatian towns. 

First stop was to put something warm into the belly, so Betsy introduced us to her favorite restaurant in the town, the Restaurant de Cerf, and we settled in for some traditional fare - Judy the Travailleur plate, featuring chunks of ham covered in spaetzle and cheese, a green salad, and potatoes gratinee, each served in its own little pot. Billy and I devoured the infamous Alsatian specialty choucroute garnie, about a pound of sauerkraut served with five different meats - a hunk of beef, pork cheek, two different sausages, and a lardon. 

Naturally Riquewihr is pretty touristed-up, but that didn't detract from the 500-year old houses and winding cobblestone streets. Much of the original wall remains intact, and nestled among the vineyards, it was as perfect a setting as a storybook could ever conjure up. Little stores have followed the tourists to the town, so we had a chance to shop a bit for Chrismas presents, spices, macaroons, and a souvenir or two.

Riquewihr is on the "Alsatian Wine Trail," which winds along the Rhine for 100 miles or so, and is dotted every foot of the way with vineyards and orchards. One of Betsy's favorites is Madame Meyer's (pronounced May-yay) in Equisheim, so we dropped in for a visit here in the heart of harvest time. Off the beaten track, we shared the place with a carload of Danes for just a few minutes and then Madame introduced us to a half-dozen of her selections. She was charming, and we met her husband briefly before loading up several cases of excellent pinot blanc and heading back to Basel.

Betsy had invited her friends Denis, a colleague from the BIS, and his wife Jane for dinner, and a raclette was on the menu. Raclette is a traditional Swiss dish, cooked at the table, of melted cheese and potatoes. Over the years, the menu has expanded to include pretty much any little thing that can be cooked on the electric table-top grill, about the size of a hibachi, so we had a couple of different sausages, zuccini, carrots, and broccoli. Raclette always includes a relish tray of cornichons and pickled pearl onions, and Betsy added chutney from South Africa and grainy French mustard. It was a hearty meal, and a fun way to socialize at the table, and a couple of Mme. Meyer's excellent bottles topped it all off. We spent a leisurely evening at the table before Denis and Jane said their goodbyes, and we were shortly into the bed.


More pictures here:
http://picasaweb.google.com/pres.nowlin/TheAlsace#

Bye bye Baden-Baden

Tuesday morning we hated to  leave Baden-Baden behind, but the time had come. A final big breakfast at the Rathausgloeckel, then a cab to the train station. The old saying is that you can set your watch by the trains in Germany, and our experience everywhere confirmed that. We arrived on the platform one minute before the train arrived at 9:14, and at 9:17 we had pulled out of the station on the 501 InterCityExpress, the same train we rode from Frankfurt to Baden-Baden, and which continues on to Basel. We shared a compartment with Jens Schmidt, a young father of two who was escaping his family to study for a banking exam.

It was a chilly morning, and cloudy, but not raining as we sped through farm country. Perfect little German villages,  orchards and field after field of cabbage, potatoes, corn, and whatever other crops, unidentifiable at 100mph, lined the tracks . The train runs along the flatland - pancake flat to the right / west, with low-slung hills to the left / east. The landscape looks not unlike rural Virginia, but the towns are unmistakeably European. The path of the train generally followed the Rhine, with France in view a few miles to the west. Farms gradually gave way to massive hill side vineyards. In a flash we were at Basel SBB, and Billy was waiting on the platform for us.

Betsy drove us to her apartment in Lange Gasse where we visited and ate lunch before setting off for the whirlwind foot tour of Basel. The tram is the preferred mode of transport in this city, and they were clean, smooth and quiet as we zipped through downtown and across the knee of the Rhine. 

 Our target was the Fischerstube, home of Ueli beer, but alas it was closed for mid-day, as were many of the other establishments. Never mind - we had a little souvenir shopping, including a stop at the local Ferrari /  Maserati / Lamborghini dealer. Impressive is all I can say!
The day had become sunny and warm - perfect for a walk along the Rhine and through downtown to see all of Billy's haunts: Globus, the department store with groceries to die for; the Cafe Rio, which looks untouched by anything post-war; Fumare - Nonfumare, a cafe / Internet hotspot. 

  The famous painted Rathaus dominates the Markplatz, and street vendors were sprinkled around the plaza. We followed Billy's old walking path back to Betsy's for a nap before taking the tram back downtown to Bistro au Violin, a classic French restaurant located in the old Basel jail.

Dinner was of the classic French sort. Foie gras, quail roulades for starters, venison on red cabbage or "open" ravioli with scallops for main plates, excellent wine, then coffee and dessert. A French restaurant in German-speaking Switzerland with English-speaking guests was fun, with a cacophany of butchered language flying in all directions.

A hot shower and a cold bath

Few of the old buildings in BB are air-conditioned, so like the natives we slept with the window open. Bells from the Stiftskirche on Markplatz rang 7 times and stirred me from a sound sleep on Monday morning. Not wanting to sleep the day away, I dragged out of bed, into the shower, and down to the street to have a look around. 

The Inner City of Baden Baden is built into the hills on the western edge of the Black Forest, and basalt cobblestone streets and sidewalks wind around between houses and municipal buildings, past churches and museums, all completely silent this morning. 

Stillness, early morning fog, cool moist air while a take a quick stroll around. No traffic at all - not a car, bicycle, scooter, or even pedestrian stirred the calm. I felt like I had the town to myself.
Starbucks has not yet mushroomed up in this burg, and the locals have the good sense not to be open for business at this hour, so I returned to the Rathausgloeckel for coffee and to check on Judith. We are thrilled to have found the RatHG. Renovated in early 2009, owned by Oliver and his wife, both of whom are international business persons and speak excellent English, the hotel has a grand total of 15 rooms, ours on the top floor adjacent to a roof-top terrace and the bell tower. At 110 Euros / night ($165 at today's rate), the hotel is a bargain in this part of the town where rooms easily go for $300 and up. 

Monday morning after breakfast we took the plunge - literally. Suffering a bit from the activities of the late night before, we staggered down the street just a block to the Friedrichsbad, the 130-year old bathhouse built over the ruins of the original Roman baths. 

Unlike the newcomer Caracalla baths next door, this one is done all in the nude, and two days a week the experience can be had in a co-ed setting. Needless to say today isn't one of them or we would have found another pastime. Continental Europeans are generally uninhibited by carnal matters, but my joie de vivre comes up a little short in that department.

You go in, put your clothes in a locker, and with the exception of a wristband, you head for the showers as naked as the day you're born. The process includes 17 steps through progressively warmer dry heat, two steam rooms, whirlpool baths, and ends with a plunge into a cold water pool. A-shiver, you then enter the "resting room" where an attendant wraps you in a hot sheet and towel. Like a mummy you then lie at peace, finally dry and warm again, until you're ready to go back to the real world. 

Many of the rooms are domed, painted tiles adorn the walls, and it is entirely possible to close your eyes and imagine the scene 2000 years ago when Romans first fell under the spell of the benefits of steeping in hot mineral water. Nevertheless, for a couple of 21st-century Americans the setting is not without its moments of self-consciousness, and I was pleased to emerge clean and clothed and ready to move on.

As a penance for our sybaritic morning, we decided on some fresh air. On the outskirts of Baden-Baden, Mount Merkur rises to a stunning view of the surroundings and is capped by a communications tower with observation area. Accessible to the public by foot or funicular, we decided on the little train, and up the hill we went. 

 The views were astounding there on the edge of the Black Forest, with little hamlets tucked into clearings between ridges and of the town of Baden-Baden itself. It was cold and windy, but we passed an hour at the summit before taking the funicular back down to town.

One never knows to what extent the locals tolerate visitors, but the Badeners have been more friendly and helpful that we would have imagined. We never floundered for more than a minute before someone approached us with assistance - from the tower workers who showed us to the elevator to the retired woman who told us that we had to push a button on the funicular to signal that we were ready to descend. Though I started all our encounters in German, everyone everywhere spoke English. I think my listeners appreciated the comic relief supplied by my stunning command of the Berlitz version of high German.

Genuinely heavy-hearted on our last night in our new favorite town, we enjoyed a lengthy dinner at a restaurant down a back alley that we had discovered exploring the day before. Judy had schnitzel and I had a home-made sausage that had been boiled in a pig's stomach and then fried and served with spaetzle - stomach discarded! It was rich and delicious.
By 10 we were back at the hotel and zipping up the suitcases for an early departure Tuesday morning.

Sunday seemed like a lifetime lived in one day.

From a groggy jet-lagged breakfast to a foggy late night in the Weinkeller with Oliver and the staff, we never stopped.
First things first - the food, of course. We were downstairs for breakfast around 8 o'clock. Muesli, fresh fruit, yogurt, 5 kinds of bread, ham, prosciutto, bacon and eggs, sausages of all kind and color, salmon with creme fraiche, several different cheeses, orange juice and mineral water and many cups of coffee were consumed, and at 10 AM we were out the door.

One of the main features of the town is the Lichtentaler Allee, and on a Fall Sunday afternoon it was filled with Badeners out for a stroll. The towering poplars were just turning yellow and it was beautiful. 

We made our way to the Frieder-Burda Museum (Richard Meier - flat planes and lots of glass, the separation between interior and exterior was as minimal as an art gallery could be) which was exhibiting a show of the Blaue Reiter salon. 

There's no checking out Kandinsky, though, until you check your coat and bag downstairs, which required a trip through the Gunther Sachs exhibit. Mostly whimsical, borderline pornographic, but visually stimulating if nothing else, it was the kind of thing I wouldn't have walked across the street to see, but as part of the coat-check process it was actually worth the time.
The Blaue Reiter was another story altogether.

Well over 100 canvases documented this step into modernism. The importance of color, the "planar-ization" of space, symbolism, mysticism, abstraction, all of the expressionistic features were fully explicated throughout the entire three floors of the museum. The exhibit was stunning, but by noon, the museum had gotten so crowded that they weren't letting anyone else in. The Frieder-Burda is connected to the old Staatlische Kunsthalle by a cafe, the "decor" of which simply defies words. 

One that does come to mind is "nauseating," which sensation was only reinforced by the post-modern interior "furnishings" on display in the galleries.
The day was much too pretty to spend in such surroundings, so we ventured back out into the park for an afternoon of further discovery. Baden-Baden must be beautiful all four seasons of the year, and the rose garden off the Allee Lichtentaler must be a wonder during the Spring and Summer.
Between manicured hedges, centered on a classic fountain and carp pool there were hundreds of different roses, many still in bloom. Rose trees, vines, bushes of every size and color were there.
 

The Staat Museum documents the history of Baden-Baden for the past 2000 years. There is a room full of Roman grave stones, boundary markers, architectrual fragments, vases, tools and knick-knacks, all found in or within a few kilometeres of BB. One realizes that we know so much about the Romans because they recorded so much of what they did - a grave marker might name the parentage of the deceased as well as his own birth and death times. The museum continues up through two world wars and to the present. 
Baden-Baden has burned twice - once naturally, once at the hands of the French. 

Perhaps that explains the predilection for masonry architecture in the town. I don't think we saw a single frame building. Everywhere the walls are stone a foot or two thick, roofs covered in terracotta or slate.
Baden-Baden must have kept her head down during WW2, as it was spared any combat. There was a camp here that housed French POWs, the Fuhrer made a visit at one point, but it was not a significant war area. The town's Jews, who numbered a couple hundred, were deported to Poland, and it is thought that 60 or 70 were killed.
All the walking and gawking put us in a coffee mood, so we grabbed a piece of cake and a cup at one of the many cafes off the Leopoldplatz. Recession? What recession? You see no empty storefronts in this town. The streets are spotless, planters abound, everything is in order, the people appear prosperous, cars expensive, and very little sign of down-and-out people. 

Always favoring something off-the-tourist-beaten-track, we decide to eat at the Gockelstube', a tiny room with a half a dozen tables and a couple of dishes scrawled on the chalkboard outside. Our initial misgivings about the service there, well-founded on the server's (who turned out to be the owner's wife) surliness, were no match for the delicious food that came out of the kitchen. After they finally took our order, the man at the bar (the owner, of course), disappeared into the back. When he returned, he had Judith's steak, cooked perfectly and served with a mountain of pommes frites. I ordered the jagerschnitzel on recommendation of another diner, and it was truly out of this world, smothered in a rich brown mushroom sauce.

As our dinner tapered off, we struck up a conversation with Pieter and Renata, a German couple at the next table. Like almost everyone we met, they were friendly and spoke English fluently. We passed a fun hour with them and walked out together and up the hill - his apartment is just around the corner from the Rathausgloeckel.

We decided to stop in at the Weinkeller for a nightcap, and were greeted by Christophe and Oliver, who were just settling down from a visit by the Ukraine President. Oliver is a US native, and also a citizen of Germany and Ukraine (the last for $500, which includes a passport). He served in the German army and later enlisted in the US Army so he could serve in Iraq and Afghanistan. He has high security clearance, and has hosted many world leaders at the hotel. Quite an interesting guy. The subject of American country music came up, and he turned the CD player to Garth Brooks and proceeded to talk good southern and do his Garth Brooks dance. Before we knew it, it was 2 AM, so up the stairs we went.

Additional Baden-Baden pictures are at:
http://picasaweb.google.com/pres.nowlin/BadenBaden02#

And they're off!

     We left Charlottesville at about 1 PM Friday afternoon, and arrived, via Charlotte, at Frankfurt Germany at 7 AM on a rainy gray Saturday morning. After navigating the sprawling airport towards the train station, we took the 501 InterCity Express train to Baden-Baden. The ride was smooth and quiet and lasted about an hour and a half. Our Mercedes taxi, the standard cab in much of Germany, dropped us at the Hotel Rathausgloeckl ("city hall bell-tower"), in the shadow of the Stifskirche, around 11 AM.

Our room wasn't ready at that early hour, so we checked in with Oliver Asel, the friendly and garrulous owner, and left our bags at the desk while we walked down the 42 steps to the center of town. Our first stop was for cappucino and fabulous croissants at LaScala on the Leopold Platz, and momentarily revived, we explored the winding, hilly streets for a couple of hours until we could walk no farther and so retired to the hotel for a shower and a nap.
After that short respite we hopped up, showered and headed out the door to explore the town for another couple of hours. We stopped in at a local cafe for a beer and some high-quality people watching, then walked back to the hotel. 

We began our evening in the weinkeller downstairs, where old Roman bath ruins are still visible (the mineral springs under Baden-Baden were first known to the Romans 2000 years ago). The barman Christophe was just opening up and gave us a hearty welcome, and we enjoyed his company until our dinner reservation - early at 6:30, at the hotel restaurant. 

There has been a restaurant of some sort at this location since the 1600s, and the old recipes have been revived in the present-day restaurant. Excellent sausages, spaetzle, potato soup (comfort food for the traveler), and of course kraut, filled us up and were a perfect introduction to the food of the region. 


It had been a long couple of days, and by 10 we waddled upstairs and hit the hay.