Basel

We got on a train early Saturday morning towards Basel, Switzerland, where we would eventually take our connecting train to Paris at 2:00 pm. We left Interlaken early so we could spend about four hours exploring Basel. We were all really glad we did. Basel gave us a different, but still great, taste of Switzerland. Also, Basel is where I may possibly do an internship next summer (if I get it, we will see) so we wanted to see what the town was like. But probably one of the biggest reasons we wanted to visit is that it is Roger Federer’s hometown!
Because we only had a couple hours we did everything fairly quickly. We stopped at a pretty church, took pictures along the Rhein river (the main one that goes through the city) and then went to the Hotel Basel where Roger Federer has a plaque in the ground (pictured).

We then split up and shopped around town for a while. We found good deals on some clothes but again, the food was very expensive everywhere. We learned that minimum wage in Switzerland is about 17.50 US dollars an hour! We think that contributes to the high food prices (for instance they were selling sub sandwiches for 23 franks – which is about 20 US dollars).


We really enjoyed Basel, it was really clean and well kept. It was also very efficient with public transportation – we didn’t see many cars, most people biked or took the many different trains and rails going through the city. Em and I decided that it would be really fun if we got the internship in the future to come back here and live for a couple months (hopefully the pay would be good enough to buy food with).