Basel: A Thrash-Punk Crossover of Swiss, German, and French Influence

While Basel was Swiss, the suburbs unfolded into France and Germany, creating a glorious interstitial border-zone groove. There was no obnoxious wall separating the three countries. Only the Rhine, that’s it. Basel was one of those “crossover” places. Since I came from the thrash metal / punk crossover world of the 1980s, I kept using that word to describe everything in Basel, even if this was a crude simplification. ‘Fusion’ didn't work. Venn Diagram didn’t work either. Crossover.

In Basel, there were two train stations, located in three different countries. The main facility, Basel SBB, sat in the old town area. They told me it was the largest border station in Europe. In a separate annex, French Railways operated a station next to Basel SBB, allowing travelers to pass through an official border crossing, putting them in French territory without leaving the complex. The French annex was on Swiss land, but the tracks and the trains belonged to France.

The other main station, Basel Badischer Bahnhof, was not too far away, across the Rhine River, but still in Switzerland. An austere construction of sandstone and concrete and recently renovated, the Badischer Bahnhof functioned as the city's gateway to Germany. Deutsche Bahn operated the facility. Once travelers exited the lobby and moved through the tunnel toward the trains, they were technically in Germany. The land was still Swiss, but the trains and the platforms were German territory.

Inside Basel Badischer Bahnhof, I slithered into a restaurant called Les Gareçons. The name was a play on words. Normally spelled garçons, meaning boys or waiters, the word contained an ‘e’ because gare means station in French. Soft reds and mahogany with chic cushions of black, white and gray dominated the scene. Natural light streamed in through skylights and large windows, illuminating the open dining areas. As chillout beats filled the space, cocktail aficionados leaned over to each other and talked at banks of knee-high nightclub-style ottoman seats.

Les Gareçons was a groovy riot of languages. I heard at least six within earshot. The belligerent conservatives back home might complain about such things, but I adored the audio mix. It reminded me of a text-sound collage I created in college 27 years ago, in which I recorded people speaking many different languages and then controlled the samples on stage via MAX software.

At the table, I opted for pasta. Not because I wanted pasta. Not because it was the only item on the menu I could read. But, rather, so I could say I ate Italian food in a French restaurant in a German train station in Switzerland.

Such was Basel. A thrash-punk crossover of German, Swiss, and French. I don’t care if the analogy makes any sense. It was in my head the whole time. It would have been a great story. I could lead with the restaurant, then flash back to the 1980s crossover scene, with diehard purists on both sides, and those in-between, like me, who were half metal and half punk, those who wanted the interstitial border-zone groove. Which is partly why I always gravitated to those types of places in the world, like Basel, with both its purists and its multilingual mixologists, everything seeping into everything else.

To be continued ...