One of my favourite parts of travelling round Europe by train was seeing the different stations and rolling stock used. Now I’ll admit that I’m no expert on either subject, but I know what I like, and one of the first examples of that on our trip was Basel Badischer Bahnhof, the DeutscheBahn run station in the Swiss city of Basel.
Basel is a Swiss city, but sits near the borders with France and Germany and so has two main train stations. One run by the Swiss Railways in conjunction with the French SNCF where all the international trains stop, and a second, smaller station run by the German railway. We’d decided to do a day trip up to Freiburg and so we headed to the German station. As we were limited on the number of days on our Interrail pass and as this is a relatively short journey we’d decided to pay for these tickets separately.
The combination of relatively brutalist architecture (although nothing compared to what we would find as we headed further east!) and a deserted station gave the whole place a slightly eerie feel.
The disco ball hanging in one of the main halls just felt at odds with how quiet it was there.
We managed to accidentally arrive at the station via a bit of a back entrance, and so initially missed the main ticket office so made do with buying our tickets from one of the ticket machines that we found in an empty corridor.
Platform level felt a bit more modern, but still deathly quiet compared to the bustling Swiss station we’d gone through the previous day.
For more on how we planned our Interrail trip across Europe take a look here.
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