round 3: Basel.

After our surprising stay in Langnau, Mom, Dad, and I headed west to Basel, yet another place near Zürich that I'd never visited. We were originally going to spend a night or two in Lausanne, just to be someplace pretty and French-speaking and with good crepes, but there were NO HOTEL ROOMS ANYWHERE, so we ended up going to Basel. Which was delightful. I had no idea Basel was so charming. Picturesque old town, interesting cathedral, big river, another weird Swiss German dialect. Dad continued to look for signs of the Anabaptist presence; all we knew was that there had been "Anabaptist activity" all through the city, but nothing else. And that's precisely what we found, actually. It was weird. We did discover, however, that there were Roman ruins  on the outskirts of the city, in the villages of Augst and Kaiseraugst. Who knew??

GIANT silver plate, from an officers' hoard that was buried during an Alemanni attack on the Roman garrison in Kaiseraugst. The hoard was forgotten until it was discovered in the 1960s during groundbreaking near the local school. AMAZING STUFF, most of it dating to the mid-4th century AD.

Reconstructed amphitheater. The red stones are new, the white ones are original.

Palazzo mosaics. There were 29 different colors used in this one (!).

One of the remaining Roman fort walls in Kaiseraugst, hastily built from remnants of an earlier settlement that had fallen to invaders.

We spent the entire next day exploring Basel proper, whereupon we noticed some strange chicken-lizard-type animals on the train station...and just about everywhere else we looked. It's a basilisk, kids, and the symbol of the city (Basel, get it?). Didn't look anything like the one in Harry Potter. (But scarier, in my opinion. Whatever medieval weirdo came up with this creature was obviously not right in the head.)

Chicken-lizard at the train station.

Wide-angle of a nifty intersection in old town, and where we had dinner.

Dinner, in this case, turned out to be tapas at Tapas del Mar (in the brown building above). They were kind enough to let me order, and we ended up with green grilled peppers (pimientos) with sea salt; green lentils with carrots, ginger, cumin, and almonds; a meat plate with manchego cheese, sausage (salchichon--don't you love when languages overlap!), chorizo, and two types of Iberian ham; crunchy, delicious little fish croquets; garbanzo beans with couscous and cucumber; grilled zucchini strips with lemon juice, olive oil, raisins, pine nuts, and mint; and a thick slice of omelette (more like frittata) with red and green bell peppers and ham. I love tapas 'cause it's hard to overeat, and you get to try so many different little things. Delightful. 

Walking back to our hotel through Spalentor - one of the three surviving city gates, dating back to the 15th century, and possible site of Anabaptist imprisonment.

In the garden outside of our fantastic hotel, Hotel Bildungszentrum 21. The rooms were lovely and clean and affordable, the staff were pleasant, the breakfast was excellent. And they had a garden and were selling freshly-picked raspberries. And we were a 10-minute walk from the center of old town, through old town. Sigh.

An adorable street in the aforementioned old town. One of many.

Basel's Town Hall, site of additional Anabaptist disputations.

Parts of the current building date back to the 16th century, but major remodeling was done in 1900, as this ridiculous Art Nouveau mural would attest. 

Inner courtyard and tower. (Still remodeling/preserving: the giant white blob at the right is plastic sheeting covering scaffolding.)

Mittlere Brücke, over the Rhine. 

Front facade of Basel cathedral. Erasmus is buried here. (Hard to get photos of the front, 'cause the square is under construction.) 

Never seen a crypt this fancy: crazy vaulted (and frescoed) ceilings, with tombs there dating back to the 10th century, and an additional archaeological site underneath.

The main floor had an interesting exhibit of casts of the original sculptures from the outsides of various cathedrals. This one is from Strasbourg, and the original dates to the 13th century. What blows my mind is that A), this is obviously modeled on a real person,  and B) there are actual thousands of statues on that cathedral. How could the sculptors have put so much time and effort into making them all so unique??

The cloisters at Basel cathedral. Funerary monuments everywhere.

From the interior courtyard, with the main facade towers on the left.

Look at this nutty German. Heh. 

Wee ferry ("fähri") crossing the Rhine. This little boat goes back and forth across the river along a cable, using the current instead of a motor. It's not a terribly practical or necessary service anymore, but the Baslers are very proud of it, and help support the operators to keep them running. Neat.

Post-ferry, we headed to the city museum of Basel to see if we could find any Anabaptist info. Another no-go. It was a pretty great museum, though: packed full of truly interesting artifacts, and quite compact, as it was housed in a former church.

Museum entrance hall, with an impressive display of artifacts from church exteriors. 

Figures from the Basel "Dance of Death," a 15th-century mural painted on a cemetery wall which was torn down in 1805. The moral of the mural (heh, heh) was to remind everyone from beggar to king to be penitent, as death was imminent for all, regardless of status. (Some fragments of the wall were saved; all 37 of the scenes are recreated as figurines in the museum, and displayed below a transcription of the different verses Death sang to each individual in the tableau.) 

Giant dragon gun barrel at the history museum. This thing was huge and awesome. Not sure if whether was part of the Burgundian Booty from the Battle of Grandson (YES, THIS IS A THING!!! and the best-named thing EVER!!)...but it was displayed near it.

They also had boat loads of crazy wood carvings (room paneling, curio cabinets, etc.).

And this intense globe of the constellations, complete with lots of toothy, wild-eyed, terrifying monsters.

This brings me to the most hilarious thing I saw at the museum, which requires a little set-up. There was an exhibit entitled "The Cabinet of Curiosities," which was dedicated to the private art and curio collections of private wealthy citizens in the 16th century. Essentially, it was a collection of collections, with a room in the center where the museum had created its own "cabinet." There were no doors on the little room--one could enter it from four points--and a few windows from the outer room looking in. I looked into one of them right at my eye-level, and here's what I saw.

One wonders if they put any thought at all into how they might position these little sculptures. Or if this was someone's idea of a joke, and they totally got away with it. HILARIOUS. (I know it's not exactly couth to post this here, but it was just so fantastically silly and unexpected...!)

And finally, one of our last views of the city: Spalentor, again. This thing was roughy a 3-minute walk from our hotel, and we had to pass under (or around) it to get into old town, so we saw it plenty of times. It never failed to be spectacular, with its giant towers and gargoyle-y creatures and crenellations and statues. I probably took 50 photos of it.

Not my finest photo, but I like having the teensy person in there for scale. This thing is colossal.

Spalentor, in the setting sun. Very dramatic.

Next up: to Deutschland! And lovely--if packed--Heidelberg.