So if you're bothering to follow this blog (God help you if you are!) you might recognise the above paragraph from my blog post about my big Germany adventure back in April when I flew out of Basel, Switzerland. Probably not? probably a good thing. More likely, you would have noted that my parents have been in the UK since late May. They haven't been in London the whole time - before they came to London they were in Paris for 5 days, and they headed off to Liverpool and then a bus trip around Scotland for about 2 weeks before coming back. As you can pretty much gather from the above paragraph, while they have been here we spent a week in Basel, Switzerland together. Mum, Dad, me, and Jeremy - his wife Rachel was supposed to come with us, but she had to pull out due to getting a new job and not being able to get the time off (which was a real shame, as for a few occasions on the trip it would have been quite helpful to have Rachel with us and as the trip went on you could tell Jeremy was really missing her). There was no real plan for what we'd do when we were there either - Mum had made it clear that since she'd organise the rest of her and Dad's holiday, aside from booking the flights and the accommodation, the rest would be up to the rest of us to sort out.
Day 1 - London to Basel
Day 2 - Three Countries, One City
Day 3 - Strasbourg, France
Day 4 - Zurich, Switzerland
Day 5 - Freiburg, Germany
Much like previous mornings, we left the house in Saint Louis, crossed the border into Switzerland, and caught the tram. But instead of going to the Basel SBB, we got off at the Schifflande tram stop and changed onto another tram, heading for the Basel Bad Bahnhof station. This station is a German station, the only German Rail (DB) station not on German soil apparently. Thanks to the wizardry of the DB app on my phone as a result of some casual "hmm, what if..." thinking on my part, I'd found that we could catch a slower but cheaper train from Basel Bad to Freiburg than if we caught it from Basel SBB; and by catching the train at Basel Bad, for 4 people on one booking a further discount was applied to the cost. In the end, it looked like €38 for 4 people each way - but when I booked through the app and added the return option, the total cost was €38 return for 4 people thanks to a special regional fare discount on weekdays during off-peak time! An absolute steal. So upon arrival at Basel Bad, we headed straight to the platform that the app said our train would leave from, passing through the former border formalities area which still is there, but is unmanned. Hopping on the double-decked German carriages, we rode along the German side of the Rhein, basically in the same wide valley we'd ridden in to Strasbourg but this time in Germany not France.
Day 6 - Back to London
Summing Up
On the note of the EU and Schengen, is the money situation in Basel. The French and German suburbs deal in Euro's, the EU currency while Switzerland has its Swiss Francs/Chabbos and there is much less overlap between the two than you would think - very few places accepted both currencies, it was one or the other. So the locals have to go around with two types of currencies, although I'm sure their bank accounts are set up to deal with both currencies easily. In the past, pre-Euro this would have been more problematic - Chabbo's, French Francs and the German Deutschmark, all worth different amounts relative to each other. The Euro and the Chabbo are worth different amounts each, although not too dissimilar - which leads me to another point. As mentioned earlier, until January this year the Chabbo was pegged against the Euro - they were worth exactly the same, they were just different currencies. How frustrating must that have been for the residents of Basel, having to carry around two different currencies which are worth exactly the same when you could just carry around one, the Euro? Sure, with the de-pegging it gives some more legitimacy for having two currencies but still. Switzerland are never going to join the EU, and so will be ineligible for the Euro - but there are other countries which aren't a part of the EU but have nominated the Euro as their official currency. The EU doesn't want any more countries to do this, so any chance Switzerland might replace the Chabbo with the Euro seems remote. I quite like Chabbo money though, their coins look quite ornate and their notes quite vibrant - it's just a bit annoying how the common note seems to be 50CHF and not the more useful 20CHF.
In the end, thinking about the paragraph at the beginning of this entry - turns out for our trip there was Swiss Cheese, there was Swiss Chocolate, we did just casually pop off to France one day, Germany another, we were back in time for dinner each night, and on the whole it was a very enjoyable trip with good times. Twas quite the nice overseas family adventure, during our Three Country Tour - or "Dreiländertour", as its said in German, the main language of Switzerland.