Friday 15 February 2019

Basel - on the way to the Old town - our first impressions ... - The 30th and 31st of December 2018



Our hotel room at Ibis Styles, though not exactly in the centre of the town was sufficently well located and besides was exquisitively decorated. The black and white city picture covering one wall gave it a whole sense of expansion and the small "decorative" details spread around the room were rather impressive, I must say.
 








Having decided to hop onto an tram (free for anyone staying at any city Hotel) we ended up deviating ourselves from where we were supposed to head to. The strolling around revealed a part of the city we might have not walked onto otherwise and it wasn't uninteresting.


















We finally made it to the main train station before finding our way to the old town. We briefly stopped at the Neo-Gothic church Elizabethenkirche, said to have been built between 1857 and 1864 and become the first "Open Church", whose concept I had never heard of. The truth is that within the church premises there were several modern wooden sculptures, that one would not expect to find inside many of the average churches. They were particularly beautiful and despite being rather simple, as far as carving is concerned, there was something very special about them that touched one's heart.





















Right close to it the Tinguely's Carnival Fountain said to have been created in 1977. We stood there admiring the 9 sculptural machines in permanet movement. It was the first time I heard of Tinguely and wish I had read about him before, once I felt he was a particularly creative artist.
 
 
It started to rain as we continued making our way towards the Markt Platz. The day was grayish but we were nevertheless positively impressed by what we had seen until then. Modernity seemed to cohabit with the old in a magic sort of blending and we were looking forward to further exploring the city with or without open umbrellas.
 















 

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