Day 10: Brugg to Basel

Today we went from Brugg to Basel. We ended up not visiting the museum we were planning on visiting in Brugg as it did not open until 10 and we didn’t feel like sitting around until then. So after waking up, fetching our laundry from reception (she even folded it for us, which we not only felt kinda weird about, but was also completely unnecessary – we are capable of doing our own laundry AND folding it…), having breakfast (the same as the day before), and packing up, we headed directly to the train station. A picture of Bear with the hostel just before heading off:

Just as we arrived at the Brugg train station, a train left for Basel, so we waiting 20 minutes and caught the next one. The frequent trains here are awesome! The train ride was no more than a half hour, and we were in Basel by 10.45, and made it to the hostel (after another half hour walk). Fortunately, this hostel has 24 hour reception, and we were able to check in and drop our bags off in a locker in the basement. We would be unable to access our room until 3pm, but since we could lock up our bags, this wasn’t a problem. The hostel:

From the hostel, we headed back into the old town. We visited the Munster (large church), and had lunch in the courtyard overlooking the Rhine. (We ate leftover bread and brie. Brie keeps very well without being refrigerated – we put it in the sink overnight with some cold water, and it was perfectly fine today). Walking past the Munster into the old town, we treated ourselves to a small ice cream cone to share for 2,50fr. We decided on the Kokonuss flavour (not hard to figure out what that means!). A photo of the Munster from across the Rhine (taken this evening):

We walked through the old town for a while, and eventually decided to head to the tourist info station. There, we found some information on local museums and things we could do. We decided to visit a museum, and made our way there. When we got there, the sign said they were only open Wednesdays and Saturdays. So we were unable to visit today. So we decided to head to the Spallen Gate (something like that), but then Mary’s knee started acting up. It was more tired than sore, but Jeff insisted that we head back to the hostel and rest it rather than stressing it more than necessary. So we found a tram that would take us across town (we’d walked quite the distance away from the hostel), and made it back to the hostel pretty quickly. It was just after 3 by now, so we headed up to our room, and then Jeff went down to the locker and fetched both our bags at once (strong Jeff!). A photo of our new room:

We then headed to the common area, and took advantage of the wireless to post yesterday’s blog post. Then we began working on figuring out what to do for dinner. The hostel was offering dinner for 17.50fr each, but we decided it was about time we went out for some good Swiss-German food. So we got on the internet and started looking up some menus. We found it very difficult to find a place that would offer a meal for less than 30fr. We finally decided on a local brew pub, and decided that instead of having a one course meal, we would instead order a few appetizers.

This method ended up working out very well. We walked to the Brauerei Fischerstube, and entered and sat down. We looked at the menu, and ordered 2 beers, 2 house salads, what was essentially a large meatball, and a dish with 2 white wursts and a beer pretzel. The meal was very tasty, and contained the perfect amount of food. The total bill came to 42fr for the two of us, which we both agree is very reasonable! The salad was delicious, and was clearly the chefs invention. It was basically lettuce with a mini carrot slaw and what we think was perhaps a turnip slaw. Both the meatball and wurst was full of all sorts of herbs, and served with mustard, and a small pickle.

The best part about dinner was that we _almost_ made it through the entire meal speaking only German to the waiter. Even Jeff tried out a little. Mary ordered our beers and the meal, but Jeff carefully asked for the bill, after being coached by Mary on how to say it. She was very proud of him :). It all went smoothly until Jeff got confused while paying and the waiter switched to English (he forgot that we were paying with Visa and started taking out cash). We had heard him speaking perfect English to other customers, so it was clearly not a problem for him.

After dinner, we made our way back to the hostel. The place was super busy with guests enjoying post dinner beers our on the porch, but fortunately the large group of children that had checked in earlier was nowhere to been seen (they were very noisy!). Since then, we’ve been enjoying a quite evening in our room, going through pictures and writing this blog. Jeff is brushing up on his French a bit in preparation for our visit to the French part of Switzerland later on in the trip. On the way back to the hostel, Jeff snapped a photo looking down the Rhine as we crossed a bridge:

Tomorrow we will spend more time in Basel, and visit the places we didn’t today. Perhaps we will go on a daytrip somewhere else if we can find somewhere interesting nearby.


Note: Don't miss our post from yesterday! We had no internet in Brugg, so we posted it earlier today.