BASEL

I have just come back from a long weekend, visiting my younger son in Basel. He has been there for the past year, playing handball for the local team, RTV 1879, with time off to join the Great Britain Olympic squad for training camps.

Basel is located on the Rhine in the northwest corner of Switzerland, where it meets France and Germany. Although there are more than 800,000 people in the urban area, most of them live in the suburbs over the borders, where it is cheaper, and commute to work. Basel itself has only about 170,000 inhabitants, which gives it the feel of a "small" big city. That feeling is enhanced by a brilliantly efficient and highly integrated transport system, with trams in the city centre (I am a great fan of tram cities). Basel airport is actually in France, but that doesn't matter, since there is a little corridor, which pokes out from the town to the airport in order to allow for a bus connection. Five minutes through customs, fifteen minutes on the bus, and you are in the heart of the city. Switzerland is part of the Schengen agreements, so there is no passport control, coming from Denmark.

One advantage of Switzerland's traditional neutrality is that there are lots of well-preserved old buildings in the major cities, such as the gate below, which originally formed part of the mediæval walls. Much of Basel's centre is closed to traffic (other than trams), and there are beautiful town houses dating from the Middle Ages. I remember the cathedral, set high on a bluff overlooking the river, from 35 years ago, when I visited as a 17-year old, backpacking around Europe on an interrail ticket. But the best building must be the newly restored town hall, resplendent in red and reflecting the solid civic virtues of an independent city state.

On Saturday, we took the bus to Zürich, where my son's team was playing an all-or-nothing game against Stäfa, a small town on the lake. A win or a draw, and Basel would stay in the top division of the Swiss league and the season would be over; a loss, and they would have to go into a relegation play-off with three other teams. On a baking hot afternoon, and in a cauldron atmosphere, Stäfa quickly built up a 3-goal lead, which they had extended to five with 12 minutes left to play. Then Basel started to string things together, the opponents' goalkeeper stopped saving everything, and Basel eventually equalised to make it 28-28 with 21 seconds on the clock. Stäfa took off their goalkeeper to create an extra man, but in the confusion they sent on two extra players instead of one, which is not allowed. So Basel got the ball back with three seconds to go and that was that. Because of the game's importance, my son didn't get any playing time (he is the reserve goalkeeper, and the number one plays for the Swiss national team), but he had predicted that, so I wasn't too disappointed. There was a lot of beer and sausages and schlager music on the bus on the way home, which continued at a nightclub long after midnight. I left them to it.

On the Sunday, my son and I and his hangover took a train and bus into the hills outside Basel and did some walking. Starting at a height of around 450 metres, we did a fairly stiff climb up to Passwang, at 1,204 metres the highest point in the canton of Basel, which gave fantastic views of the serious Alps to the south. We were fortified along the way by fresh apple juice, a barrel of which had been left for sale by a farmer at the bottom; and by goulash soup at one of those alpine restaurants just below the summit. After admiring the views, we hiked down the other side, caught the bus down the valley and the train back into Basel. We had coffee and cake at the main railway station, while watching FC Basel clinch the Swiss football championship for the third year in a row on a big screen television. The city centre was closed that evening as fans took over the streets to celebrate; we made do with a doner kebab over the river in Basel's surprisingly large immigrant quarter.

One other nice touch to the weekend. On the bus to Stäfa, we passed through Habsburg, the village from which the family took its name. It was a moment for historical reflection, as we sped through the tunnel under the castle at 100km/h.

Walter Blotscher