POSTCARD FROM BASEL

Press, Volume C, Issue 29536, 10 June 1961, Page 8

POSTCARD FROM BASEL

TT is bad enough when A you're looking for a street you can’t find (because you are in it already! that all the signs show is how to get to Zurich, Geneva or Lausanne It is worse when they tell you only how to get to Germany or France. Things are so crowded here that if you have the right anatomy there is a corner where you can sit simultaneously in Germany. Switzerland and France. The airport of Basel, three miles from the town centre is in France No way to run a country. Basel has 290.000 inhabitants, which is all any town should have. It has universities, theatres, concert halls, art galleries, museums, swimming pools, a zoo. nicht clubs, espresso bars; all the delights people flock into large

cities for. Every second building is a bank. Why? Who pays for them? Must ask Dr. Coombs how he managed to build his skyscrapers from the few thousand pounds I owe him. Basel in the past was mainly inhabited by dancing skeletons; by Mme. de Stael, doing no good here when she should have been in Geneva; and by hirsute gentlemen in bloomers, wielding articulated flaying instruments with knobs on. It is strange to think that the main export of this peaceful country used to be mercenaries. And they were not exported tor their pretty uniforms either (Michelangelo designed the papal one): they were good fighting men. In that most deplorable revolution, the French one. the only loyal troops that fought to

the death were the Swiss Guards. This is commemorated by a statue of Canova, in Lucerne, representing a dying lion in marble; a fate worse than death. Basel is also famous for all sorts of things that are not here: a congress building looking like a skull, a church in Ronchamp that is like a tired sail and the power station in Rheinfelden. which looks like an accordion. Basel looks like Basel Posters: “Swiss, remember you are Europeans!” European Unity Week. The Swiss know it They change any currency you want on any street comer. Churchill started the movement in 1946 on the marketplace of Zurich. It came as rather a shock to the future participants that no rightfeeling Englishmen thought England to be a part . of

Europe. Right, too. Beautiful views at every street corner. Sharp lines ascending to peaks nearing the stars. Strolling couples stop. They gaze, lost in delight. Brows soften, hands clasp unwittingly. They're looking at the stock market bulletin. —GEORGE MOLNAR. P.S.: The quite unrelated drawing above shows the auction of a famous French art collection in Zurich. The girl in the foreground is Major Rubin in disguise, though maybe I’m wrong. The band bidding 12J00 francs for that thing there is mine. Irresistible impulse. If the bid had been accepted, the body belonging to the hand would be languishing today in a Swiss gaol A most horrifying experience.