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!