Swiss and Switzerland

A swan stretching its wings on a very chilly morning on Lake Thun, deep in the Berner Oberland

Even in the very rural Swiss country of Appenzell, try as you might, you just can’t take a bad photograph of a good cow:

For a brief while I lived just a few hundred meters from here,

Nobody really knows how Switzerland’s capital city Bern got its name, but the favorite story that the locals tell goes like this: a long time ago the King was looking for a good name for the city, so he sent a team of hunters into the surrounding woods, promising to name the city after the first animal that a hunter could kill and bring back. That animal happened to be a bear, so ever since then the city has been named Bern – or, as it is known in the local Alemannic language (a more evolved form of German), Bäärn.

Beautiful snap of the mighty Aare River, transporting huge volumes of melting snow from the Swiss Alps towards the North Sea, as it enters the medieval city of Bern,

Continuing the series, here are some flowers at the Saturday morning street market in Thun,

Continuing the series, it is quite usual in architecture for the front side of an object (the facade) to be the most embellished and visually interesting.

But sometimes that doesn’t happen.

In a recent blog I provided a good example of this by the amazing, incredible, almost unbelievable Wülflinger Unterführung – a passageway at the Winterthur train station whose very existence is clouded in intense mystery, and whose tiny design and very steep steps would prevent it from being implemented today:

Well, if you find yourself in Winterthur – and if you are NOT afraid to enter deep, dark places, then you will be greeted by an amazing example of “backs are better than fronts.”

Because this is no ordinary passageway!  It is lined with railroad-related works of art, such as this:

And this:

For a country where murders almost never happen, it was a bit strange that Moriarty tried to kill Sherlock Holmes here, of all places. The nearest village to the famous Reichenbach Falls (site of the deed) sits the city of Meiringen, that has fully capitalized on Sherlock fame:

With a little help from Microsoft lens, here is the light display at the main train station in Winterthur:

Here is it, a tunnel steeped in great mystery and known to extremely few people, located at the train station in Winterthur, Switzerland:

Even many residents who’ve grown up in Winterthur and have spent their whole lives here do not know that this incredible place exists!

You may ask, what is it?

The platforms at the main train station in Winterthur all have exactly two access and egress points – except for Platform 6/7.  Platform 6/7 also has the usual two exits – but in addition, at the very far end of Platform 6/7 there is an exit that is only known to people willing to walk the hundreds of meters to this end of the platform. It is not visible from the platform – and it is not documented anywhere. In fact, its existence is very conspicuously hidden!

When was it built? I don’t know – but I expect very few people know.

Why was it built?  I don’t know – but I expect even fewer people know.

How many people use it?  I don’t know – but I expect very few people use it. It is otherwise invisible and totally hidden to the public.

But . . . inside the tunnel there are AMAZING WONDERS that I have photographed and will be sharing in upcoming blogs!

These look like ants. But if you look really closely you will see they are not ants – they are people of the Swiss city of Basel:

You might ask how I came to photograph these ant-like people of Basel.  During the Basel Herbstmesse there is a big tower that has a big elevatable platform. You board the platform when it is at the bottom:

This is the platform en route to the top:

And here’s what it looks like when the platform is at the top. To the people in the platform, their fellow citizens below look like ants – but remember, they are not ants, they are the people of Basel!

This is the famous Italian explorer Marco Polo,

I have not researched this personally, but I read somewhere that at one point he stayed in the Swiss city of Bern, in the area known as the Matte:

This is the area where farmers would bring their produce in the middle ages to be sold in the city of Bern, so interestingly the merchants of this area developed their own language, Mattenenglisch, that was not understandble outside of their community, so they could keep their negotiations a secret. There are many such examples of dialects created for this purpose around the world.

Continuing the series, I found a few things really attractive about this market, not the least of which I did not see the typical German Christmas market vendors that tend to get boring after a while. There were a surprising number of stands belonging to volunteer organizations, many of them selling products made by their members.

Continuing the series, the Basel Herbstmesse is so huge, there are market stands and attractions sprawled out all across the city:

Also known as Thun Castle, it was built in the twelfth century

What is very surprising about the Basel Herbstmesse, or Basel Autumn Fair, is not that it is Switzerland’s oldest street market – over 600 years old! And it is not that it is Switzerland’s largest street market, drawing hundreds of thousands of visitors each year.

What is amazing is that so few Swiss people seem to know that this market exists or have even heard of it.

I’ve talked about walking the plank – in Stuttgart. And I’ve talked about walking the plank – in Esslingen am Neckar.

Continuing the series, here is an art exhibit in Basel at the top of the Basel Rosshof, at one time a historically significant place for horses, and today a rather ugly building:

It is amazing that it still runs today, and of course it raises of host of other questions, such as who takes care of it, is there a financial budget for it, and the like.

Here is a plaque where you can see more details:

If you have ever been to the train station in Basel, and if you have a sharp and discerning set of peepers, then this view might drive you crazy:

Why? As you can see, there are train tracks 11, 12 . . . and 14 and 15  – but there is no track 13!

For a long time, I pondered this mystery. Was track 13 removed to avoid bad luck?  Other train stations have track 13, so I don’t think so.  Was track 13 removed for satanic pagan reasons?  Basel has one of the largest pagan celebrations in the free world – so this could be likely – but I never was able to connect this pagan ritual to the number 13. Was track 13 removed because the Swiss are sloppy guys that made a mistake and never bothered to correct it?  Hardly!

So then I got busy: I hit the rails and asked train conductors – lots and lots of them. Sadly, none of them knew the answer. I hit the Basel train station office and asked the counter staff – lots and lots of them. Sadly, none of them knew the answer.

Fast forward about THREE YEARS! Recently, I finally got lucky – while talking to a train conductor a train driver happened to overhear my question, and he jumped in and told me there was in fact a track 13. Turns out, he knew the track very well and drives on it regularly!

You see, the key to the mystery was, there is a track 13, but no platform 13.

And to their great credit, the Swiss Federal Railways did not lie or mislead about this. In German, the term used is “Gleis 13” which – translated – means “Track 13” and not “Platform 13.”

After three years of hard work – the great mystery of the Basel Bahnhof has been solved!

Continuing the series,