Hmm, Basel

My stay in Basel began with my first experience as a Couch Surfer. For those of you who don't know, CouchSurfing.org is the Internet 2.0 version of traveling couches. In other words, it is no longer necessary to have met someone in person before agreeing to let them spend one or more nights in their place. I desperately needed to save some money on the Basel section of my travels, so I decided to give it a try for that reason, but I'm also not particularly suited to striking up conversations with the random strangers in my hostels (I will leave that to Mom). CouchSurfing promised a stronger personal connection with someone and a chance for some real conversation, something I missed.

I did not stumble on to this idea myself, Renee and Sarah introduced me to it when they served as hosts themselves. I know what some of you are thinking: how can it be safe for perfect strangers to agree to spend the night in a house over the internet? CouchSurfing is aware of the safety issues and allows people a chance to fill out quite a lot of information about themselves allowing hosts and guests to match each other relatively well and as a way of getting through places like Berlin and New York where there are tens of thousands of couches to be had. CouchSurfing also offers a couple of other safety features including references from past hosts and guests, as well as friends and address and rudimentary identity verification. It's not foolproof, but then neither is booking a hotel over the Internet.

I started out looking for couches in Berlin, but it turns out in CouchSurfing and in hostels, you still have to plan ahead; all of my prospective hosts were booked. I figured that was going to be true in any big that I tried, so I tried a smaller one in Basel and immediately got two hits. One of them fell through (he didn't have anything on his profile anyway), but the other was Anders Nättorp, a Swedish transplant who has spent 18 years in Switzerland (many of them in Lausanne). He was so generous, taking me out to eat in this ridiculously expensive city (McD's "value" meals start at 11 Swiss Francs, which is more or less at parity with the dollar. That's right, a Big Mac meal costs more than 11 dollars) as well as giving some great trips on what to do in and around the city. It was an incredible experience. Anders is a chemical engineer and he was able to fill me in on some of things I am missing out on thanks to that year in Germany. Very cool, for him as well, as I suspect most people don't geek out over his work at Nescafe or phosphorus cycles in Egypt, but I sure did.

The last few days in Basel, I have spent at the Y, which has made up for charging me that outrageous cancellation fee (excuse me, YMCA, but you did not lose the room - I cancelled before check in time, that is the worst excuse ever) by having proper showers, a less flaky than Starbucks internet connection, and a mobility card that makes public transport free. It almost makes up for the fact that breakfast isn't included. Almost.

There's lots more to say about Basel, but I figured a short introduction to my stay here would be a good idea. I came to Basel because of my great uncle Gerry, who went to school here. The city offers the deadly combination of being on the German border (and thus accessible by my Eurail pass), in Switzerland, and a reputation for art and architecture that it has certainly lived up to. It's also not that big a city, so a quick trip outside of the city leads to landscapes like the one you see below. In case you were wondering.