In 1356 a major earthquake struck Basel, destroying every major church and castle within 30km of the city. It remains the largest quake ever recorded in Central Europe. As a result, the residents had to rebuild most of their city, including the city wall. The new wall enclosed a large crescent, whose inner curve was formed by 2.5km of the Rhine’s left bank, and included 40 watch towers and five entry gates. The outward facing layer of the wall was 2 metres thick, the inner one 1.6 metres. And there was a water-filled moat dug outside it (as seen in an earlier post).

The Spalentor is the largest of the three remaining gates, reaching to 40 metres (the round towers are 28 metres high). It was preserved, along with two others, when the city wall was dismantled in the late 19th century to ease the city’s expansion, and restored by the canton in 1933. It originally had an extension gate and a drawbridge, as shown in this drawing.

The other two remaining gates are the St-Alban’s Tor, whose clock bells we could hear from our temporary apartment, and St-Johann’s Tor, whose tower we can see from the kitchen of our permanent apartment.

While Loxon’s arm was still in the cast, it was time once more for the Herbstmesse (Basel’s autumn fair). As with the previous year, the public spaces were filled with fun rides and stalls, including the giant ferris wheel on the Münsterplatz. Marion’s brother and his family came down to stay with us. And cousin Leonie was convinced by Mark to join him on the scariest looking ride of all, the Maxximum. This 52 metre high monster consists of a single arm that swings in a vertical plane carrying a tumbling pod for 8 occupants (perhaps victims is more appropriate) at its tip. It accelerates to about 6 revolutions per minute, which works out at around 100km/h tangential speed at the bottom of the sweep. As you can see at right, this tends to flatten anyone’s hairdo, but Mark recommends the whirling views over the Rhine from the top.

Two pairs of twins, Loxon and Wiki and their cousins Olivia and Alexander could only watch on from below in amazement as their father and cousin, or uncle and sister, gyrated above. But it turned out that Wiki and Loxon would soon see an even larger metal arm swinging down at high speed. They were eye-witnesses to a crane crash that occured in Basel a couple of weeks later. The crane in question was being used to dismount one of the larger construction cranes visible from our apartment across the river. Wiki and Loxon had been eagerly watching the process all morning until it began lowering the enormous cross-arm of the construction crane, and then tipped over. Mark heard the crash and looked up, but saw nothing. Despite the sound, he found Loxon’s claims that the crane had fallen over hard to believe (the base was hidden by the buildings and so couldn’t be seen). But the local online news soon confirmed the accident.

We went out later that day to survey the damage. The arm of the 70 tonne crane was literally wrapped around the building it landed on, and had managed to knock in part of the wall on the far side. One person in the room behind that wall was injured, but otherwise there were no casualties, which was rather lucky given the size of the crane. It took more than a week to clear up the mess.

When Loxon’s cast came off, the doctor recommended swimming, so Wiki and Loxon resumed swimming lessons, this time at the swimming centre in Germany, Laguna Badeland. Despite being only a few minutes across the border, the courses cost half as much as in Switzerland (not to mention that the instructors speak high German, so Mark can understand them). We also had the free swine flu vaccination provided by the Swiss health service in preparation for the winter flu season.

We don’t remember when it was exactly, but around the same time, Wiki learnt about the magical effects of green beans. It’s a house rule that, before someone gets dessert, they must finish their main course. So, faced with more green beans than he wanted, Wiki burst into tears over dinner. He was crying with such misery that it took several minutes for him to be able to tell us what the problem was, that he didn’t want to eat his beans. Mark then explained a long-kept secret, and offered Wiki an arm-wrestle. Lo and behold, Wiki lost the wrestle.

He was then instructed to eat one bean, and afterwards arm-wrestled again. The change was incredible. Already, with just one green bean, Wiki managed to hold his own for a draw. Then, as he ate more beans, he could win the arm-wrestle, each time more and more quickly. It didn’t take long then for Wiki to finish off all the available beans. By the end of the meal he had forgotten all about dessert and was in tears again, distraught that there were no beans left to eat.

In early December, Carole and Don, who were on exchange in Edinburgh, popped over to Basel. Wiki and Loxon led them around the downtown sights before releasing them for a trip to the Roman ruins at Augusta Raurica. After visits to a few other local museums, Wiki and Loxon insisted on dragging their guests to one of their favourite playgrounds, the Kieswerk Spielplatz, which is just across the border in Germany near the swimming centre. It’s a vast pit of pebbles, inhabited by a two-storey toy gravel processing plant, whose belts, tumblers and conveyor bins can all be operated by turning wheels. Carole and Don showed admirable fascination in the face of the boys’ enthusiasm.

The next week it was time for Loxon and Wiki’s childcare to stage the Christmas play. Loxon was cast in the crucial role of the donkey (seen above), while Wiki showed great enthusiasm for his part in the flock of sheep (at left). Luckily they weren’t picked to play trees, like a couple of the other children.

For the Christmas celebrations, Marion’s brother hosted a feast for the whole Kohler family at his house in the Black Forest — it was the first time that the entire family has been together for Christmas in over ten years. He roasted a wild pig for the occasion, and there was even snow to make it a white Christmas.

On New Year’s Eve we held a dinner party to watch the fireworks. Wiki and Loxon fell asleep at 11:30pm and had to be woken up, but it was a successful evening overall. And after that, our friends Jon and Janice visited from New York for a few days. They were forced to stay an extra day or so while the Swiss railways retrieved their passports, which had been accidentally left on the train when they first arrived in Basel. This was stressful for them, but good for us because it meant more time for Jon to teach Wiki and Loxon the secrets of the truly vicious insult, you smelly cheese rinds.

Standing in the peaceful Andreasplatz courtyard, directly in the centre of the old city, this greedy uvavorous simian blends in with the patrons of the cafes that surround it. He is the fourth Basel monkey statue in a lineage going back to the 14th century. After the first broke in 1585, a replacement, the so-called “new monkey” was sculpted in the 17th century, replete with hat and shirt. In 1867, the fountain was installed, and the sculpture given pride of place atop it.

The third version was a replica carved in 1916 because the new monkey was becoming too weathered and retired to the Historisches Museum. And in 1973, that was again replaced due to weathering, by another replica. He’s had a coating of mineral oil since to protect him from a similar fate.

Every year Baslers put on one of the most astonishing festivals, the Fasnacht. It runs for three days in the week following Ash Wednesday (late February or early March), during which time the entire city shuts down to take part in the fun.

It all begins on Monday morning at 4am, when tens of thousands pack the narrow spaces of the city centre. The cliques (Fasnacht societies) assemble in costume with their enormous lanterns and musical ensembles. At the stroke of four, all the street lights turn off and the crowd is plunged into darkness. At that moment the cliques begin to play, filling the streets with sound, and the marching starts. This is the Morgenstraich (morning stroke).

In 2009, we stayed in our beds but were awoken by the sound, even though our apartment is half a kilometre from the city centre. This year, Rebecca and David were visiting us from London and Mark dragged himself out of bed to see it with them. The atmosphere was electric — and it felt surreal to be surrounded by action on darkened city streets. The march continues until mid-morning before everyone goes home to catch a few hours’ sleep.

The action resumes in the early afternoon with the cortege, an enormous procession that runs in both directions on a circuit of the city. Well over 12,000 official marchers take part, being a combination of cliques, wagons, pipe and tambourine groups, smaller fancy dress groups and so-called Guggenmusiken (mobile pop bands). The cliques march in bizarre costumes and play traditional music, as well as pulling the lanterns and handing out sheets of topical Swiss-German poetry. The wagons, around 140 of them, are hauled by decorated tractors and contain characters called Waggis (singular) who wear masks with enormous hair-dos made from ribbons and who throw gifts and confetti over the crowd. And the Guggenmusiken generally just rock on.

When the cortege is operating, the route is constantly filled with marchers going in both directions, even though it is over three kilometres long. Marching groups leave and enter the stream to break for food and drinks, but there are always enough to fill the route at any given time. A sense of the atmosphere is captured in this video. So much confetti is thrown that the streets are soon covered in a layer several inches deep. Some of the wagons even have special air cannons that blast confetti in a huge cloud five metres long.

Other groups of costumed pipe and drum players, or street performers, roam the streets, both in parallel with the cortege or during the breaks, and in the evenings, when there are also concerts, and the restaurants and bars are open to serve the crazy hoards. We went to one concert where the bands, Guggenmusiken, marched onto and off the stage on a ramp, while continuing to play, so the music never stopped.

On Tuesday it is children’s day, where smaller wagons appear manned by children. And on Wednesday it is back to the main cortege, with the lanterns on display outside the cathedral. The celebrations continue like this until 4am on Thursday morning, when there is a final blast of drums, pipes and brass to mark the close.

All of this is partly funded by the sale of special badges called Blaggedde, which are coloured bronze, silver or gold depending on how much you choose to donate. If you watch the cortege, it’s a good idea to buy one and wear it. Otherwise the Waggis might decide to pick on you.

In 2009, aunt Sabine and cousin Lea came down to stay for the festivities. The boys and Lea had great fun dressing in costumes, as shown below, and going out to the cortege. They ran after the wagons shouting “Waggis, Waggis” and were given gifts in return. Over the three days, they each collected around a kilogram of sweets of all kinds, and various fun objects such as toy cars and fridge magnets.

Because the wagons are so large, the children often need to be lifted up for them to collect the Waggis’ gifts. At one point Sabine was carrying Loxon on her shoulders for this purpose, and his leg covered her Blaggedde. As can be seen below, a Waggis decided she deserved the standard punishment for not wearing one; he grabbed her by the collar, and stuffed several handfuls of confetti down her back.

For weeks after Fasnacht, the children continued to play “Waggis, Waggis”, building makeshift wagons from dining chairs and sofas, pretending to shoot confetti from paper rolls and handing out gifts. It is an unforgettable experience, three days of utter frivolity, and well worth attending at least once in your life. The Baslers call it Die drey scheenschte Dääg (the three most beautiful days).

Standing on one of Basel’s busiest pedestrian plazas, Steinenvorstadt, this fountain is forced to compete for attention against rows of bars, shops, a cinema complex and crowds of young people weaving about. It was built in 1672 in honour of the weaver’s guild which has been housed next door since moving here after the earthquake in 1356. The sculptor was Balthasar Hüglin, the same one responsible for the Caritas fountain in the Waisenareal.

Atop the pillar is a representation of Count Oswald von Thierstein, who was awarded the ruins of the Château du Haut-Kœnigsbourg, a beautiful castle in France, in 1479 by Holy Roman Emporer Frederick III for his leadership in the Burgundian Wars against Charles the Bold. The castle had been destroyed in 1462, and he rebuilt and extended it. In this statue, he carries a banner depicting the mascot of the weaver’s guild, a griffen.

His shield bears the letters S.P.Q.B., a reworking of the famed Roman initialism to refer to the government and people of “Basiliensis” — the banner likewise depicts the Baselstab, emblem of the city, on its reverse side. Both the pillar and statue are replicas, built in 1925; the original now stands in the Historisches Museum.

For this year’s skiing trip, we again drove across to Austria, meeting up with Aunt Sabine, Uncle Edgar and Cousin Lea in Brandertal. The trip was more like a holiday than last year’s, chiefly because the boys took far more readily to their skis. They joined the same class as Lea, and the three of them picked up where they had left off, and were soon turning and braking with ease. After three days of lessons on the magic carpet, they were promoted to the next class where they learnt to ride the t-bar and poma lift. All this gave Mama and Papa time to do some skiing themselves.

On Friday, the classes took part in a ski race. The course was about nine professional racing gates covering perhaps 200 metres, with a laser timer and a public announcement system for running commentary. Given that Loxon, Wiki and Lea had only joined the class on Wednesday, they did impressively well to make it down. They weren’t in the top three places (who were all at least 50% taller than our three), but they weren’t last either. And everyone got a medal, of course.

It was March as we left the snow behind hoping it would be the last we’d see for a while. On the way home, we stopped for coffee in Vaduz, the capital of Liechtenstein, a quiet village which was perfectly ordinary save for being stuffed full of investment banks with names no-one has ever heard of. And we also dropped in on some friends in Zurich for dinner. As a result we were caught in a ferocious snowstorm that coated the autobahn in ice — we were forced to creep along at 40km/h all the way home from there. But at least we avoided being in any of the, according to the Neue Zürcher Zeitung, over 300 resulting accidents.

Our next trip was to Tuscany for Easter. An Italian couple, whose son goes to the same childcare as Wiki and Loxon, invited us to stay in their family house. This turned out to be a huge mansion in the hilly countryside to the south of Volterra. It had dozens of rooms, including whole wings that had fallen into ruin and could no longer be used, and ornate decor, such as the frescoes in our bedroom and hall.

Fearing holiday traffic, we left home at 4am on Easter Thursday. This worked well — the St. Gotthard tunnel was empty when we reached it at 6am. And we skirted to the west of Milan, for a smooth run down as far as Chiavari. But after stopping for lunch beside the beach, we were soon stopped dead in a tunnel, waiting 15 minutes before continuing at a crawl. A couple of further stops, and more inching through tunnels, lasted about an hour before we emerged from yet another tunnel onto five centimetres of snow. Snow in Tuscany in April had been enough of a surprise to bring the traffic to a standstill, but by now we’d started to think of it as normal.

At the house, we were some of the first guests to arrive, but over the next two days a steady stream of people appeared. In total there were around 50 guests for Sunday lunch, including perhaps twelve children. Enthusiastic conversation erupted everywhere amongst the mostly native Italian speakers, although French, English and German were juggled by everyone according to the listeners — a challenge for the merely bilingual among us. The heating was primarily provided by wood fires, but there was an enormous electric oven in the kitchen, which produced a constant flow of delicious Tuscan food, prepared by various members of the extended family. Despite the chilly weather, it was a fantastic few days.

We also took a day trip to the beach near Follonica where we gazed across to the island of Elba (famed as Napoleon’s place of exile in the palindrome Able was I ere I saw Elba) and tried out Mark’s Kubb game (involving the tossing of wooden pieces across a rectangular court) which had been waiting since his birthday in September for a suitable occasion.

We broke up the trip back from Tuscany by staying in our favourite bed and breakfast on Lake Como, and then braved the St. Gotthard tunnel traffic on Easter Tuesday morning. The wait to enter the tunnel was only 45 minutes, but what with the earlier traffic near Genoa, it took 11 hours of driving to get home. In total, we had spent 23 hours on the road over the six days, but the Tuscan familial experience was worth it.

On a rainy day in early May, Mark took the boys on an excursion into France to see the Château du Haut-Kœnigsbourg, a wondrous castle built from the 12th century onwards. It was painstakingly restored in the early 20th century, complete with intricate twisting gates and drawbridges that would have been virtually impregnable to medieval armies. More importantly, from the boys’ point of view, it had a large collection of cannons. Mark wasn’t sure if he should answer their increasingly precise and technical questions about how exactly these functioned, and was thus relieved when his knowledge (salt) petered out on the question of where one could obtain gunpowder.

Later in May, Loxon’s godfather Andrew came for a week’s visit from Australia, finally bringing some summer weather with him. We took him to a dinosaur park in Réclère, on the border with France to the south-west of Basel, which had dozens of life-sized dinosaur statues placed along a lovely forest walk.

And with that, the Basilisk’s Gaze is finally up-to-date. We’ve been in Basel for 21 months and have decided that we will return to Australia around the end of this year. We have plenty of adventures planned between now and then though, so stay tuned.

This sculpture stands in the grounds of the Lange Erlen animal park, a place we have visited too many times to count. It is called Bilderbuch (picture book) and was built in 1990 by Schütz Heiko, a gift to the park from the Basel branch of the Swiss Trade Association. It seems originally to have had moving pages, although they are now rusted into their positions.

The park has free entry and a wonderful collection of animals. The most exotic species is a family of lynxes, but more entertaining is the troop of incredibly agile Hooded Capuchin monkeys — their house has an indoor viewing area that is a great relief from the cold in winter. There are also many kinds of deer, donkeys, rats, wild pigs, rabbits, owls, peacocks, storks, turkeys, pheasants and other birds. And the boys love picking dandelion leaves to feed to the pygmy goats.

The summer has finally arrived here and we’ve already gotten off to a galloping start on the adventures we have planned for it. First off, Wiki and Loxon visited their grandparents, while Mark and Marion rode the TGV to Paris for the weekend. It was lovely to see The City of Light again after ten years. The highlight was strolling in the Rodin sculptor garden on a sunny spring day.

Another weekend, we visited Uncle Jürgen and his family, and attended the biennial Ritterspiele (knight’s games) in Horb. The locals of the town turned out in medieval clothes, and even armour, and an extensive marketplace was erected for the sale of goods from old times. There were swords and bows, chainmail, herbs and spices, craftwork of all kinds, and even fortune-tellers.

The games themselves featured four knights competing for the hand of a widowed countess. In heavy armour, they charged their mounts along the jousting lanes, performing feats of skill and strength. In the final joust, they even knocked one another off by hitting their opponent’s shield with their lance. It was astonishingly realistic. Wiki and Loxon had also manufactured their own equipment for a similar tournament at home, as seen at left.

The day after the games, we attended Oma Birgit’s wonderful 70th birthday lunch and joined her for a charming ferry ride down the Neckar River to Hessigheim. And since then, we’ve also had a visit from Derya and her boyfriend Robert, who came down from Bonn for the weekend.

We’re now preparing to set off on our main summer crusade — you can read about that in the next post, although it’ll be after a longer interval than usual as a result.

The cathedral is the centrepiece of Basel’s historical heritage, standing on a hill beside the Rhine. A celtic settlement stood on this hill before the Romans came and built their own fortification there in the first century BC, and some time in the early middle ages a church was built on it. By the 9th century this had become a cathedral, and the structure that stands there today was built in stages between 1019 and 1500. Parts of the 9th century edifice are preserved inside.

Basel was the seat of the papal council from 1431 until 1440, and the anti-pope Felix V was elected there in 1440. The cloisters on the east side contain, among the graves of many Basel elites, that of mathematician Jacob Bernoulli, a contemporary of Isaac Newtown who contributed to the development of calculus and probability theory.

Standing in such a prominent position, the cathedral can be seen from many parts of Basel, and thus is a familiar icon for the city.

In July, we set off eastward for an 18-day summer driving holiday. Our first stop was lunch in Friedrichshafen, reached by taking the car ferry across Lake Constance from Konstanz to Meersburg. We ate in a terrace restaurant overlooking the glittering lake, but we didn’t have time to stop in at the Zeppelin Museum — we were due in Munich by 4pm when the World Cup quarter-final between Germany and Argentina would begin.

As it was, we got caught in traffic coming into Munich, almost every car sporting a fluttering German flag, and missed the first ten minutes of the match. When we reached Georg and Dani’s house, Thomas Müller had already scored the first of Germany’s four unanswered goals. Everyone was ecstatic with the result.

Over the next few days, Wiki and Loxon spent time with Dani and Georg’s daughters, Elena and Filiz, their trampoline being a particular source of excitement. We visited the Munich Zoo, checked out the old city centre and spent some time at the Deutsche Museum, where all four kids were fascinated by the boats, submarines, planes and rockets on display. Loxon asked if the man in the ultra-light (pictured above) was real or not. Perhaps he thought the man had just landed, popping in to check out the exhibits like everyone else. Meanwhile Wiki took careful note of the World War 2 rockets, with designs on building his own. Fortunately for everyone he’ll have trouble getting his hands on the necessary fuel.

We then headed off to an old Bavarian hotel in Gstadt, a village on the shores of the famous Chiemsee lake to the east of Munich. We lay on the shore and enjoyed the sun, while Wiki and Loxon splashed about against the background of mountains and islands. And we rented a pedal boat to survey the huge private lakeside mansions, complete with their own yacht marinas.

While there, we also made a day trip to Berchtesgaden in the southeast corner of Germany to visit the salt mine. Wearing special overalls, you board a small open-topped train and rattle through pitch black tunnels into the bowels of a mountain. Inside, you can slide down wooden slip rails to go deeper and cross an underground lake by barge while a laser light show plays on the cave walls. There are also great displays showing how fresh water is used to dissolve salt from the rocks and is then pumped back to the surface.

We continued into Austria, stopping for lunch in heavily touristed Salzburg. Wiki became nauseous as we approached the city, possibly due to an allergy against kitsch, but he recovered enough to be carried around the sights of the town, including the house where Mozart was born.

Our next stop was a visit to our friends, Eva and Christoph, in the Austrian alps. Their house sits on a hilltop above the town of Scharnstein, with incredible views down the Alm valley. As you can see below, they have a fantastic pool whose landscaping incorporates a waterplant garden. Christoph served one meal after another of delicious locally produced food, some of which the boys even picked from the garden themselves. Every piece of meat we ate came from a local animal that Christoph had known when it was alive.

From there we drove to Vienna, stopping for lunch at the Benedictine abbey in Melk (the protagonist in Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose is supposed to have come from here). The weather had been unusually warm so far, but now it became a heat wave. When we arrived at Alexandra and Martin’s house the temperature was in the high thirties.

The boys held up well in the heat as we marched around the grand monuments of Vienna, strolled the Belvedere gardens and explored the Naschmarkt. A plethora of gold and silver painted street performers, sweating in sealed costumes, helped keep them entertained. They were also excited to feed the rabbits owned by Lauren and Levin, Alexandra and Martin’s young sons.

After a day or so, both our families packed up and drove the 45 minutes out to Alexandra’s family’s holiday house on the shores of Lake Neusiedl. Despite covering over 300 square kilometres, this lake between Austria and Hungary is nowhere more than 2 metres deep. The four kids ran around together on the back lawn, spraying water and having fun, while the adults relaxed in the shade. We also used the family’s pedal boat to trundle out onto the lake and around to a public beach, where everyone could go swimming.

On our last day there, we drove around the lake to the Neusiedlersee Family Park, a theme park with dozens of rides, displays, animals and play areas. The boys weren’t sure how they felt about the rather scary three-metre tall dragon that lurked inside one cave and sprayed onlookers with mist, but they loved the huge water slide, whose rubber boats picked up tremendous speed, and feeding deer through the fence, including one large Red Deer stag who came close enough to touch his metre-long antlers.

Then came the long drive home, broken up by a stopover in Ulm. We tried to reach Ulm in time to see the Nabada water festival, held that afternoon. But by the time we arrived, it was over and the after-party was beginning. Given how many people were still there, it would have been impossible to get a decent view anyway — on the way back to our car, we encountered a human traffic jam and had to circle back half a kilometre to get through to our car. We contented ourselves with dining in a beer garden overlooking the now deserted Danube as the sun set and the crowds drifted away.

Before setting off for home the next morning, we visited Ulm’s towering Minster (technically not a cathedral since it has never been the seat of a bishop). It was the tallest building in the world when it was completed in 1890, and remained so until 1901, the start of America’s century — from then until 1998 the world’s tallest building was in the United States. The Minster was the last in a line of eight European cathedrals and churches to be the world’s tallest building, spanning six centuries. In fact, it had taken almost that long to build — the foundation stone was laid in 1377. Before them, the Great Pyramid at Giza has held the title for almost three millenia.

This sculpture stands a little off to the side in the gardens of the Tinguely museum. It’s by Jean Tinguely’s wife, Niki de St Phalle, who was a highly successful artist in her own right. She was French, but also lived in America and Spain before marrying Tinguely. Her most famous work, hon-en katedral, was a six-ton, 27 metre long female figure which visitors to a 1966 exhibition at the Moderna Museet in Stockholm entered through the groin. She also contributed to the Stravinsky fountain in Paris, and spent two decades towards the end of her life building a sculpture garden in Tuscany. Many of her works remain on public display around the world, in the United States, Germany, France, Israel and Switzerland. Although they never had children together, Jean and Niki were indeed a fertile couple.

A few weeks after returning from our summer holiday, Mark left the rest of the family behind for another break. The twins visited their Aunt Sabine, while Mark joined his friends Nathaniel, Carol and Danny for five days of the Tour du Mont Blanc. The scenery formed a wondrous backdrop, while the party hiked from Chamonix on the west side of Mont Blanc to Trient in the north and around to Courmayeur on the south-east side. We covered 74km, including around 4,300m of ascending, through France, Switzerland and Italy. The route passed beneath numerous glaciers, and even brought us close to marmottes and mountain deer. Carol has since put up a great selection of the best photos.

Under Swiss rules, Wiki and Loxon are legally obliged to attend formal kindergarten from August in the year they turn five. This isn’t quite as structured as kindergarten in Australia, which they will begin in February next year, but it is still quite a change from the childcare. They’ve been attending two full days and two half days per week for six weeks now, and have settled into their new routine. Wiki is already looking forward to the holidays though — he complained that “everyone spends so much time talking we don’t have enough time to play anymore” and asked “When do I have a day off, Mum?”

On the first weekend after the start of kindergarten, Danny and Camilla came to visit Basel. We showed them around the Roman ruins at Augusta Raurica, 10 minutes up river from Basel. This started as a fortified town in the first century BC, and grew to become a major frontier city in the third century AD with an amphitheatre, council chamber, arena and temple. Wiki and Loxon searched the ruins for any signs of actual Romans, but they all seemed to be on holiday.

We didn’t have to wait long to see them though. Two weeks later, cousin Alexander came to stay for a few days and we attended the Römerfest (Festival of the Romans) held at Augusta Raurica. This annual celebration of all things Roman takes place amid the ruins, and includes participatory demonstrations of weaving, coin stamping, manual wheat milling, quill writing, stoneworking and basketry. There are also cavalry and legion displays, as well as an Italian gladiator troop that puts on fights with authentic weaponry. The athletes who do this are serious men, prepared to be injured regularly in the course of their exhibits, as they struggle to beat each other.

Seeing all this amid the actual Roman ruins brought the history to life vividly. Strangely Wiki and Loxon were more interested in stabbing each other with wooden swords, however. They still have four eyes between them, so we guess we should be grateful.

Meantime, our plans for moving back to Sydney are well under way. Our goods will be collected from our apartment in late October and shipped by container to Sydney. In order to give our furniture a chance to arrive before us, we’ll then spend some time travelling: three weeks in Europe, one in Singapore and probably a couple in Australia. We hope to be settled into our house in Balmain by Christmas. But there’s still time for at least a couple more posts on the Basilisk’s Gaze, so stay tuned.