Karlsruhe 2012: Basel, Switzerland

After the Mercedes Benz museum in Stuttgart, Me and 5 other people traveled by train to Basel, Switzerland, a city in the very northern part of Switzerland and close to the French and German borders. Prior to going there, I didn't expect a lot since I haven't heard of it before. However, what me and the other found out was that this city was absolutely gorgeous.
We arrived there on Friday night and stayed at the YMCA hostel there. It was very nice, but pretty hot since Europeans apparently don't believe in air conditioning. After getting settled, we went to go find something to eat and eventually settled on an "American" style restaurant because we couldn't find much else that wasn't packed. I have always wondered if there were such things as American restaurants in other countries and it turns out there is, however, they don't taste like restaurants in the U.S. I had a "shrimp potato" which I have never heard of before in the U.S. but it was quite good.
The next day was dedicated to exploring Basel and we did so by picking up a brochure at the hostel and visiting as much as possible the sights that it mentioned. The first stop was the Marktplatz where their town hall was located. It was really old, red, and decorated heavily on the outside with gold looking trip and a lot of colors painted on the red. Inside were murals and Gothic looking doors and arches. Next we headed to the Rhine river which flows through the city. The water was an awesome blue-green color that reminded me of the color of ocean water. I was not expecting that at all and it was really cool. We took a ferry across the river to get to a cathedral that was on the riverbank.
The cathedral was made from red brick and had two tall spires that were interestingly spiky. The inside was decorated with large stained glass windows that were works of art by themselves. The ceiling was vaulted really high and it was just an interesting building in general. The basement was open to the public and there were several graves of important church members, the oldest dating back to the year 999. It's crazy to think how old that is considering the US is only about 200 years old.
After the cathedral came the city's famous fountain which looked like it was alive because of its water features that were meant to look like machinery. Unlike regular fountains that just spray water, this one moved it around and used it as a power source. Next to the fountain was another impressive cathedral with several gargoyle's, however, what made this one different from the other cathedral was what was on the inside. As we walked in we were greeted not with somber church music and "do not disturb the church members" signs, but were greeted instead by loud rap music and basketball players. For some reason the cathedral was host to a basketball game, an the whole sight was surreal because you had sweaty basketball players fighting for the ball to loud rap music contrasted to stained glass windows and a church altar. Totally not what we were expecting.
After that, we headed to find a modern glass building that was world famous for its complex design. The building looked like someone took a normal glass building and crumpled it with their hand. It was really cool and it would be awesome if I could help work on something like that some day. I wasn't able to get close to the building because it was built on a private college campus, but I do have a picture below.
After this visit, our group realized that we were one train stop from the French border, so we seized the opportunity to walk across the Swiss-French border into the town of St. Louis, France. We made the joke that we came several thousand miles just to come to St. Louis. The town was pretty much just like Basel, just way smaller and with its signs in French. After that, I stopped to get a salami pretzel and headed towards Freiburg, Germany.