Welcome to our travelogue, a quick way to keep family and friends up to date on our life in Basel. We hope to add posts here regularly. If you like you can subscribe via RSS . Please read whenever and whatever takes your fancy. However, we’d prefer if you did not create public links to this site, nor send the address to other people without asking us first. If you’ve arrived here without invitation, then we hope you’ll respect our privacy.

Since leaving Australia in August, we’ve been rather busy carting ourselves around the planet, with no time for much email, let alone blogging. However, a travelogue is supposed to be chronological, so we’ll start back in Sydney, and catch up over time. But just so you know, we are now living in a temporary furnished apartment in Basel in the Stegreif Mill, one of the buildings that houses the Swiss Paper Museum. Life is proceeding essentially as planned, although everything seems to take longer than expected here. We’ll also intersperse, amongst the travelogue entries, photos of the many fountains, statues, medieval buildings and other civil decorations that adorn Basel and give it such charm.

Our last night at home in Sydney was August 1st. After weeks of planning and sorting, the removalists had come and packed the majority of our possessions into a somewhat battered-looking container. The house was empty, apart from a borrowed air mattress and the yet-to-be-packed flight luggage. The boys ran from room to room delighted by the echoes of their own shouts. In the morning, we packed, finished cleaning up the house and made some final arrangements. Then we set off to Bondi Junction to stay two nights in the Meriton Apartments, our ‘neues Haus’ (new house) as the twins called it. They were quite excited to find that it was built on top of a bus terminal — if you happened to be so inclined you could sit by the huge circular window in the living room and look down on an endless stream of buses and taxis going in and out. For mysterious reasons, the adults preferred to ignore this and instead look outwards to the eastern beaches and the ocean. Either way, it was good to be underway after months of concerted preparations.

The apartment building also had a heated swimming pool and spa, so adorned with floaties we went down through the foyer to check it out. This proved to be a wonderful idea. The twins had not been swimming since March, and more exposure to the water was long overdue. Wiki was delighted to discover that he could now paddle short distances over deep water, and Loxon’s traditional reticence at all things containing more liquid than himself was firmly shaken at seeing how much fun Wiki was having. This was to prove a perfect preparation for swimming experiences in Singapore, Mannheim and Basel over the next month.

As if to emphasise what we were soon to give up, Sydney turned out a beautiful sunny Sunday, in which we walked down to Centennial Park to see the black swans proudly drifting along the lake shore (and, of course, to chase some moorhens around — after all they could probably do with the exercise). On Monday, Opa (Grandpa) Chris drove us out to the airport for the flight to Singapore. There was no space left in the car, but Tante (Aunt) Marina made her own way there separately to see us off. We arrived at check-in, proud of our immensely complex packing plan. All our non-carry-on luggage, including cots, child carriers and toys for two months, was carefully arranged into four check-in items, each not heavier than 32kg, and neatly separable into those we needed in Singapore and those we could check through to Frankfurt. We had even called the airline in advance to confirm that this was allowed. We placed our luggage onto the conveyor, and smiled to ourselves as it agreed that our heaviest item was only 31.8kg. For a moment, we savoured the satisfaction, until a few seconds later the check-in agent explained that items of luggage could only be checked through to Frankfurt if our stay in Singapore was 48 hours or less. Our stopover there was 56 hours. It would have been so much easier to pack if we had known this in advance; and now we would have to deal with all our luggage in Singapore. Would we be able to find a taxi with around two cubic metres of luggage space at close to midnight in Singapore Airport? It looked like we would soon find out.

After a quick lunch of risotto (life is so much easier these days with the microwaves in parents’ rooms), we waved goodbye to Opa Chris and Tante Marina, passed through immigration and went to watch the planes landing and taking off. They’re much the same as buses, but they go up and down instead of in and out, and even parents seem interested in watching them.

When it was time, we went to check out our plane, an A380. ‘That is a grosses Flugzeug (big plane)’ remarked Loxon, showing not only his ability to speak two languages at once, but also astute awareness of modern aircraft designs. We walked past the largest queue I’ve ever seen waiting to board a plane, and stepped into business class. But describing that can wait until the next post.

This is one of 50 identical basilisks that were cast in the late 1800s, and around half of which still dot the city of Basel. The design, by Wilhelm Bubeck, won a competition in 1884, held to choose the footpath fountains for the city. This fellow stands on the north bank of the Rhine, gazing over the path of the St-Alban Ferry.

Australians might be shocked to learn that this and almost all other fountains in Basel are fed with drinkable water, which then runs lazily down the drains. There’s no need for water rationing here, which takes some mental adjustment. After a while, the urge to find and turn off the tap does fade though.

The A380 is broad, even on the upper deck. The walls, while curved, are too far apart to give any strong impression of a circular fuselage. The business class on Singapore Airways is configured in rows of four seats, one at each window and a pair in the centre. As a result, a single seat uses roughly as much floor space as four or five economy seats in a 747. For the solitary businesswoman, this is superb, especially given that the seats fold down to form a level bed 193 cm long.

But for those travelling with children, this arrangement presents a problem (sure, a luxury problem, but real nonetheless): no matter which seats you choose, your children will have easy access to an aisle. So while you are momentarily distracted by the ethereal adjectives on the business class lunch menu, your toddlers are liable to slip away to explore the cavernous surrounds.

© Imre Solt
Source: Wikimedia Commons under GFDL

Since the said surrounds include an emergency open lever for the pressurised door, this doesn’t make for a peaceful journey.

The problem is exacerbated by the seat width, a portly 86 cm, and the insulating divide that separates the adjacent pairs of seats. Unless you are an orangutan, it is not possible to reach the far side of the seat adjacent to your own, which is where the electronic controls for the lights, seat motors, video console and call button are. If you need to restrain your two-year-old when he is intent on conducting a black-box functional analysis of these systems, you must stand up and squeeze sideways through the gap. You had better be agile and fit — and hope that the seatbelt light isn’t on at the time.


There is one overwhelming advantage of the modern aircraft though, namely the video console (at least if your kids never get to watch television at home, and are therefore transformed into zombies at the sight of motion pictures). Once in the air, it was a simple matter of gaining access to the video controls for long enough to turn on Horton Hears A Who! Setting the language to dubbed German had the added advantage of providing some free language training.

This does not quite provide attention-free child-minding however — it is still necessary to rescue a distraught child at irregular intervals by fast-forwarding through a scary scene. Strangely enough Kungfu Panda appears to have fewer of these than Dr Seuss. And with video-on-demand you can pause your own movie while you take care of theirs.

The reported child-friendliness of Singapore Airways failed to materialise, at least for our age group. There were children’s packets, but these were aimed at the five to ten years bracket. There was nothing in them of much interest to someone not yet three. Also, because we had declined the children’s option of cheeseburgers, the hostesses seemed oblivious to the fact that Loxon and Wiki were not adults. About two hours into the flight, I was astonished to discover a hostess carefully laying out full service for Loxon. He already had a tray, a generous table cloth, a thimble-sized butter dish, ceramic salt and pepper shakers, and a full-sized metal knife and fork. Luckily he was also too surprised to have acted on any of this before I leapt to the rescue.

The fancy tableware included water glasses that began with a friendly thick base and rose around 10 cm to an elegant fine rim. We asked politely if there might be plastic cups instead, but were told that they didn’t have those in business class. About ten minutes later Wiki bit off a sizable shard of glass, so we calmly instructed him to spit it out, while a nearby hostess began shrieking. Wiki had the sense to ignore her and listen to us. The shard emerged without causing any internal injuries, leaving Wiki with only a minuscule prick on the outside of his cheek, pinked by the point of the broken glass in his hand.

While this didn’t seem to hurt him, a tiny ball of blood pearled persistently from the spot. The head of the cabin crew was summoned, but the first aid kit he brought had no bandaids — only a continuous roll of plaster, and no scissors with which to cut it. Security precautions apparently precluded their inclusion.

We’re not sure exactly what happened next, but a mysterious protocol involving successively higher authorities was followed, and after ten minutes a pair of scissors was duly produced. I wondered whether I should use one of the plentiful steak knives to cut the plaster, but I didn’t have a firm cutting surface, nor the courage to expose such an obvious security flaw. It’s unwise these days to show much inventiveness in the vicinity of aircraft security procedures.

In any case, after the commotion had subsided, the staff were much keener on the idea of finding some plastic cups from somewhere, that somewhere turning out to be Economy class. We finished our meals, ordered a couple of warm cups of milk and settled the boys down into the largest beds they have ever slept alone in. Since it was now past their usual bedtime, they both fell asleep, and we got a chance to test out those fully flat beds ourselves for the remaining four hours of the flight. They are indeed luxurious and we were glad not to be bent up in Economy.

In Singapore, it was almost midnight by the time we passed customs and collected all our baggage. Fortunately the exorbitant luggage storage office was still open, and happily took our money to look after the half of our luggage that we had wanted to check through to Frankfurt. The remaining luggage then went into the boot and front seat of a taxi. There were no child seats, but that didn’t seem to worry the driver, so we packed the twins between us on the back seat and had them share the central lap belt. We reassured ourselves with contemplation of the miniscule probability of having an accident on this single short trip, as our ride flashed along highways in the dark to bring us into the city.

Nestled in the old city, this fountain’s history goes back to 1468, when it was mentioned as a wooden fountain. The present form was created in 1530, although at that time it stood at the centre of the intersection. In 1846, it was moved to the side, where it still stands.

The street curving away in the background is Augustinergasse, the broadest of the three lanes that meet at the fountain. It opens onto the cathedral’s square a short distance away.

We aren’t ordinarily a five-star hotel family, but we needed a hotel room with enough space for two cots, and the discount deal we found for the Signature Suite at the Fairmont Singapore turned out to be only a little more than the cheapest reasonable alternatives. So we treated ourselves to a luxury. After all, the point of stopping in Singapore was to relax and recover.

The foyer of the Fairmont is cavernous and tranquil. The subdued lighting and rich textures generate a powerful atmosphere of serenity that contrasts with the surrounding hubbub on the streets. The layout of fountains, couches, sculptures and service desks is unexpectedly organic. And it is populated with immaculate, smiling characters, none more cultivated than the diminuitive and exquisitely deferential maîtresse d’hotel, who gravitates from guest to guest like an adoring satellite. It is easy to see why people are willing to pay the full price to stay here.

We reached our room and ordered a litre of milk via room service for an impressive S$24 (which was A$20 at the time). At 1:00am local time, with kids to re-settle, we weren’t complaining. And we did get the twins back to sleep, but Loxon’s finely tuned internal clock had inexplicably recalibrated to Singapore’s timezone — he awoke on the dot at 5:40am, his modal wake-up time in Australia.

Reasonably priced milk was, in fact, not far away. The Fairmont adjoins the Raffles City shopping mall, replete with supermarkets and restaurants, so there is no necessity to leave the building if you prefer to stay cocooned. The mall is by I. M. Pei, designer of the Louvre’s glass pyramid, and includes a lounge area on the top floor. A fitness products company has thoughtfully set up a trampoline adjacent to the lounge, providing the perfect way for young ones to release some pent up energy.

Here Wiki waits his turn, while Loxon demonstrates his squat-jump technique. The other bouncer is Natasha Sommer. Yan and Natasha were on their way through Singapore heading to the Beijing Olympics, and we were delighted to catch up with them for lunch and a swim.

By far the best feature of the Fairmont was the swimming deck, which has two circular pools. The smaller one is wading depth and ideal for kids. Having whet their whims for water at the Bondi Junction Meriton, Wiki and Loxon went forward in leaps and bounds in the hot, humid conditions. Wiki, spurred on by a Dutch boy, even experimented with leaping into the pool from the side, which Yan managed to capture on video.

We didn’t try to be tourists in Singapore, instead relaxing as much as possible before the second and longer leg of our journey. We did shop briefly in the famous district along Orchard Road, but found the prices only mildly cheaper than those in Sydney. With the subsequent fall in the Australian dollar, Australia is possibly the cheapest place in the world right now for consumer electronics, at least until inventories are exhausted and prices adjust to the exchange rate.

We also discovered a handy use for modern Internet cafés: with screens as large, and bandwidth as quick, as they are these days, it is a simple matter to entertain your child while catching up on email. Open a window on one half of the screen with a cartoon (in the language of your choice) playing from YouTube, place the headphones on the child’s head, then use the rest of the screen for yourself. Even discounting your own ‘net use, the child entertainment is about the cheapest per hour you can find anywhere.

The stopover was well worth the extra time it took, and we were well-rested when it came time to catch our flight to Frankfurt. The plane was a 747, much less impressive than the A380, but for us more practical. Business class has a central bank of three seats, and pairs of seats at the windows. This arrangement allowed us to seat both the boys away from an aisle. The seats, when folded down, are not far from fully flat in any case.

We managed to make the thirteen hour flight coincide with the kids’ nighttime sleep, so they slept for about half of it. They were then well awake as we descended into a sunny morning in Frankfurt. Sabine, Marion’s sister, collected us from there in her seven-seater Mazda 5 (having three seats in the second row means you still have five seats after folding down the rearmost row to accommodate luggage). It is lucky though that Mark had resisted indulging in the sumptuous business class meals, because someone had to squeeze between the child seats on either side of the middle row for the ride to Mannheim.

Standing opposite the main train station in Basel, this intricate scene, Switzerland Succoring Strasbourg, was a gift from France to the Swiss Confederation in 1895. It was designed by Frédéric Bartholdi, the designer of that other famous gift from France, the Statue of Liberty. It commemorates humanitarian help given to the city of Strasbourg during the Franco-Prussian War of 1870/71.

Despite its size, it is easy to miss against the backdrop of the station’s grand façade and the enormous cylindrical BIS headquarters that stand nearby.

Imagine discovering that you have a racy, blonde cousin living on the other side of the world, who is the same age as you and who is just as keen to meet as you are. Lea is four months younger than the boys, and they were understandably excited to meet her upon arriving in Mannheim. From Lea’s point of view, things were even better: she had twin blonde cousins!

Her prospects seemed even rosier when it was revealed the boys would be sharing her bedroom, but alas that only meant she would be sleeping in Mama and Papa’s bed. Still, it was fun to show the boys around the garden and watch as they set about destroying everything.

This destruction was only fitting. There has been a town at Mannheim for at least 1200 years, but it was destroyed twice by foreign military forces in the 17th century. The semi-circular city centre was rebuilt in an intriguing pattern of square blocks, reminiscent of the silicon wafers used in making computer chips. Addresses in the area are specified by a letter and number combination to identify the block, rather than by street names. House numbers then run either clockwise (A-K blocks) or anti-clockwise (L-U) around the block. In typical Teutonic fashion, this system is stricly ordered, functional and carefully labelled, while still being unfathomable to anyone unfamiliar with it.

Marion’s sister, Sabine, lives about 8km outside the centre of Mannheim, in a suburb called Pfingstberg. Given the fleet of motorbikes, bicycles and bicycle trailers in their garage, it is no coincidence that this is only about 2km from Zweirad-Center Stadler, the largest bike shop in Germany. This 10,000 m² warehouse is packed full of every conceivable type of bike, and even has an asphalt test circuit in the middle with humps, gutters and scenery boards. The day after we arrived in Mannheim, we all cycled there, the twins getting their first ride in a bike trailer. Lea demonstrated her expertise on a Laufrad (pedal-less bike) around the test circuit — she has her own Laufrad at home — and Wiki donated some skin from his knee to the track while attempting to follow her. On the way home, the competition to ride beside Lea in the trailer was intense, until sustained persuasion convinced Wiki that the front-mounted childseat would afford better views.

The biggest surprise came when we later visited the Strandbad (a beach along the Rhine). Sabine opened her car boot to reveal two shiny new Laufräder, early third birthday presents for the twins. Within minutes, Loxon and Wiki were bouncing their way along the beachfront, crashing every few metres as they tried to keep up with Lea. When they finally tired of the bumps and bruises, they tried their hands at skimming stones on the river (that was when we realised that our container would have to pass this
spot at some point on its way up to Basel).

It took several more weeks before the twins got the hang of their new rides. But it wasn’t too much longer before they were wheeling expertly along the Rhine in Basel, as seen here. We also scooped some grainy videos (Wiki, his coasting technique, Loxon and his encounter with trees), once their skills were up to scratch.

Almost directly opposite Zweirad-Center Stadler was the Budget office from which we rented our car. We had booked a Passat station wagon, or similar. Similar turned out to be an almost new swanky black Peugeot 407 SW estate. The side mirrors swivelled in automatically when you pressed the lock button on the remote, and the on-board computer knew everything, so long as you could understand its German. The 2 litre turbo-diesel engine was versatile and powerful enough, while using just 4.7 l/100km on the highway. For comparison, a 2003 Toyota Prius hybrid uses about 4.5 l/100km on the highway, while being a much smaller car. The Peugeot’s range of over 1400km made it seem like you never had to put fuel in it. Also, I drove it for over a week (admittedly in city areas of Mannheim, and with plenty
of other things on my mind, such as keeping right) before noticing that it had a sixth gear. It was a wonderfully competent vehicle.

One of the great attractions of Mannheim is Luisenpark. Covering 41 hectares, this park cum zoo cum botanic garden cum amusement park contains a fascinating array of zones, each with its own features and atmosphere. From the exotic butterfly enclosure to the gigantic climbing castle, from the chinese teahouse to the penguin pool, from the gondoletta on the lake to the peaceful meadow tucked in a quiet corner, it has something for everyone. For the travel-weary adults, just lying back and gazing over the broad swathes of soft green grass felt like paradise. The futuristic form of Mannheim’s television tower hovered on the horizon, hinting at a science-fiction utopia of perfectly controlled environments.

The boys’ favourite area was the children’s mud pits, where they ran screaming in circles, covered from head to toe in a thick layer of muck. They also enjoyed the nearby sand bowl, where chain pulleys allowed the deft to lift sand by the bucket-load up to a two-metre high platform. From there, it could be dropped through chutes to drive sand-wheels as it slid back down to the ground. Lea continued to string the twins along with her charm. And somehow — we can only speculate, of course — they ended up convinced that the park’s name was “Lea’s own park”.

This fountain stands beside Basel’s main art gallery, the Kunstmuseum. It was wrought in war-time 1941 by Alexander Zschokke, a Basel-born sculptor and architect who had returned here from his teaching post in Düsseldorf in 1937. There he had earlier been a close colleague of Paul Klee, who was forced to flee to Switzerland from Nazi persecution in 1933.

The three figures atop the dado represent the three ages of man. The obscured figure is Youth, handily substituted by a pair of excitable young men in the foreground of this shot. The relief figures around the dado mimic a Roman sarcophagus, yet are reminiscent of the suffering hell-goers common in Renaissance works, with the added horror that many have streams of water issuing from their mouths.

Numerous other works by Zschokke populate Basel, and one or two may well feature later in this travelogue.

It has taken astonishingly long to get broadband internet and fixed line phone connected to our new apartment. As one reader said, he didn’t realise we had moved to Italy instead of Switzerland.

Outlining the saga can wait for a later post, but we are now into the twelfth week since ordering the connection and it is still not set up. After much cajoling, the telephone company has sent us a wireless USB modem as a temporary solution. As a result, the Basilisk can now finally reopen its eyes. Apologies to those who have felt deprived in the meantime. You should see the next post shortly.

Since the boys were born, we’ve spoken German to them, but English to one another. The reward for this effort came soon after we arrived in Mannheim. Wiki had been refusing to speak German in Australia for some time, probably because he had decided it must be a baby language, nothing for big boys like him. He soon found that even grown-ups spoke German in Mannheim, and his rapid switch of tongue was impressive. While Loxon still used the odd English sentence, there was nothing but German from Wiki. We soon decided it was time to switch to English when speaking to them.

It is a strange feeling to change to a new language after speaking with your child in another one for all of their lives. Every little phrase that has become part of the daily routine suddenly is different. In some cases, it is hard to remember the words for certain things, even in your native tongue, because you are so accustomed to using the word in the other language. Imagine that, in the middle of changing your child — something you have done literally more than a thousand times — you forget the English word for nappy, and are forced to cram the German word (Windel) into an otherwise ordinary English sentence. The sensation nibbles somewhere around the edges of your identity. How is it possible to forget the word ‘nappy’? Doing so while remaining a highly-skilled nappy user, felt like good evidence against the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis and its modern variants.

Conversely, speaking German to adults in the normal course of life was exhausting. While my German vocabulary was well-equipped with words for nursery objects, it was rather brittle in the broader world of shopping malls, family gatherings and, as it happened, genetics. In the week after we arrived, Opa Günther had his 74th birthday party, and for the first time all six of his grandchildren were together. Wiki and Loxon’s other three cousins, Leonie and twins Olivia and Alexander, are a little older, but were just as excited to meet the boys. Our pediatrician back in Australia had told us that Marion’s brother having twins means Marion is also more likely to do so. And it is hard to argue given that the background twinning rate without fertility treatments is around 1 in 80 pregnancies. So far though only Danny Yee has been able to propose a mechanism to explain what Marion could share with her brother that would make having twins more probable. The details are too complex to go into here, but trying to explain them to the family at the party definitely gave my German a work out.

While we were in Mannheim, Sabine introduced us to the wonderful pool centre in Schwetzingen called Bellamar, which has tiled sliding embankments, a giant spiral slide and in-pool tunnels leading to dimly lit grottos, along with the usual assortment of spas and saunas. The boys leapt straight in, and even demanded a trip down the giant spiral. Loxon was a little shocked when he was plunged into the deep pool at the end of the trip, but he took it in his stride (well, in his dog paddle anyway).

One of our German helpers in Australia, Derya, who is now back studying in Bonn, also came to visit us. She gave the boys a puppet with which she had grown up, called Der kleine Maulwurf (the little mole), who is a popular cartoon character in Germany (although he is actually Polish). His delicious short cartoons are all available on You Tube and make a great 5 minute distraction for little ones.

Other highlights of our stay in Mannheim included two museum visits. One was the Landesmuseum für Technik und Arbeit, which is phenomenally technical, well beyond what any three-year old, and probably most thirty-three year olds, could comprehend. But the boys had fun pressing the buttons and watching strange objects jerk, swing, spin and light up. We were too late to watch the daily cranking up of the old steam locomotive, but we did manage to operate a giant bellows — large enough to require two 15 kilo people to stand on it — that sent a message cannister whizzing through a pipe up to the ceiling and back.

The other was the John Deere factory, which has tractors on display from the 1921 Lanz Bulldog through to modern air-conditioned monsters whose tyres are higher than most people can reach. All these are crawlable over and through, but fortunately the keys had been removed from those in working order. Although I suppose watching a tractor bounce out through the glass walls with Loxon at the helm would have offered stunning, if short-lived, entertainment.

Finally, our next stop was Basel.

This fountain was cast by the Paravicinische Giesserei in 1864. It stands on Aeschengraben, whose dual carriage is split by a lovely wooded green strip. There are dozens of similar fountains throughout Basel, including at least two others involving swans on this stretch from the main station into the wealthy residential area known as the Gellert.

When we arrived in Basel, we often walked along this road, with the kids safely separated from the traffic by the hedges (which can be seen in the background here) on either side. Naturally the fountains got regular use, especially given how much water Loxon needs to keep up his high energy lifestyle.

We had booked a temporary furnished apartment in Basel through an internet agency, but we had no idea what to expect. It had been advertised as having 4.5 rooms, and we had confirmed that it had two full bedrooms and a study. We also knew its location and that it was on the second floor with a lift. But beyond these crucial facts we knew little.

The apartment turned out to be in a five-century-old half-timber building (pictured here) called the Stegreif Mill, one of two that together contain the Swiss Paper Museum. The adjacent Gallician Mill dates from before 1428, but first became a paper mill in 1453 and now houses the main museum exhibits. Separating the two buildings is one part of the St-Alban Teich, a canal whose water drives a huge antique water wheel. This wheel was mounted directly below our living room window, filling the dining area with the sounds of rushing water as it ground implacably around the massive axle hour after hour. Naturally, this was a hit with Wiki and Loxon. The apartment also had half-views of the Rhine, a projector connected to a Mac Mini, free broadband and an old piano. The other furnishings and fittings were somewhat sketchy, but that just meant fewer things needed rescuing from the twins. Overall, it was a pleasant surprise.

As soon as we had finished the handover and unpacked the car, we headed down to the museum cafe, two storeys directly below us. It wasn’t until we were finished our coffees that we realised we had no Swiss Francs. As is often the case in Basel, we could have paid in Euros, but Serge the waiter had already seen that we were moving in upstairs, and told us we should simply drop by the next day to pay. Already the Stegreif Mill was starting to feel like home.

Over the next couple of weeks, we spent our time getting oriented, looking for a permanent apartment and teasing out those little details of life in a new country that demand immediate attention: how the parking rules work, where the nearest shops are, which objects in them are actually edible and so on. There were a few challenges associated with our entry status as tourists — Marion’s employer wouldn’t arrange a residential visa until the day she began work — meaning we couldn’t yet register with the canton administration and so couldn’t prove we had a Swiss address. Mark went to the Post Office in the old city a total of four times, trying by various means to join the Swiss car-sharing organisation, Mobility, before he eventually succeeded. Fortunately we had rented the Peugeot for three more weeks, so it was possible to cover ground rapidly and see what areas of the city we liked.

In the process, it became obvious that a car is about the worst way to get around Basel once you know where you are going. The traffic lights are geared to give pedestrians and bikes the quickest passage. In the central areas, many of the streets are one-way for cars (but bikes can go both ways) and priority goes to the highly efficient trams. Since the city is relatively flat, this means cycling is usually the fastest way to get between any two points, unless there is a direct tram and you are lucky with your timing. Expecting a car to get you somewhere quickly is a recipe for frustration, which is the way it should be in such a compact, quirky city.

The trams were a source of excitement, since we had first seen them in Mannheim. Here they were everywhere, and Wiki took the opportunity, before others realised his plan, to conduct an experiment on them. His method consisted of swinging his balloon into the side of an oncoming tram. The result was the destruction of one piece of his apparatus — you can guess which — and the conclusion was mild distress. But he accepted the empirical evidence bravely, and forgave the tram, eventually.

Not being registered as residents also meant we were forced to use pre-paid mobile phone connections, since we could not sign local contracts. But there was one administrative task that turned out to be unexpectedly easy: setting up bank accounts. Everywhere else we’ve lived, banks make it tricky for newly arrived immigrants to open an account. Not in Switzerland — not right now, at least. We rang the UBS central branch and were given an appointment with a senior customer advisor later the same day. When we arrived, we were greeted at the door, then ushered into a private meeting room where we were served sparking mineral water. A second customer advisor appeared with a large box of toys, and proceeded to open it for the boys in a corner. After some discrete enquiries about our financial needs, an account structure was proposed with both joint and individual accounts, plus credit cards for each of us, all for a modest monthly fee. To top it off, these fees would be waived for a year, so essentially we would be getting everything we could possibly need for nothing.

You know capital is in short supply at a bank when they take your cash for free with no minimum balance, while plying you with mineral water. But I guess there has to be some advantage from the Global Financial Crisis. We walked out an hour later with a complete set of Swiss bank accounts, feeling rather refreshed.