BASEL THROUGH THE EYES OF ALAIN SULZER

Do you like crisp, clean prose? Read Sulzer’s novel The Perfect Waiter. Do you like sharp opinion pieces? Read Sulzer’s book about his native city, Basel. Here are a few excerpts:

Eating out. There used to be a teashop in a 14^th century house – an institution beloved to tea drinkers and named after its owner, Teehaus Manger. It has been turned into a restaurant. Of the name only manger remains, but something about drinking has been added. The restaurant is now called manger & boire. On the lower level the last of the smokers congregate – in Basel there are actually still a few places for smokers, although one has to be a club member to be admitted. Best vantage point to see Basel? The Münsterplatz, where one may dine at the agreeable restaurant Isaak Iselin. It is named after the man who under the influence of Rousseau became a passionate defender of natural human rights, and in 1771 founded the Society For Encouraging and Furthering Goodness and Service to the Community. The Society still exists today and is known to (almost) everyone in the abbreviated form “GGG”.

Isaak Iselin

Money. Visitors from neighbouring countries may be startled or paralyzed by shock if they have neglected to study the menu and are confronted with the bill -- served up, we hope, by a friendly waiter and after a satisfying meal. It may be hard to understand why a pizza which is neither larger nor tastier than its equivalent on the other side of the border has to be so much more expensive. You will soon come to realize that in Switzerland quite a few things are different from the rest of Europe, but nothing is more advantageous. Well, almost nothing. Apple electronics are cheaper than elsewhere on the continent. And one more attraction for European visitors: Here is their chance to have something else in their wallet than euros and cents. In Switzerland you pay with Franks and Rappen.

Philanthropy. The new threatre in Basel, which opened in 1975, offers some seats with obstructed view, cruelly hard seating, and a stage with an angled back wall, which follows the contours of the street. But here as elsewhere we must remember the adage “Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth.” The theatre has been financed by several ladies who remain anonymous to the present day. We know only: They are more than three and fewer than ten in number!

 (Source: A. C. Sulzer, Basel, 2014)