Basel Herbschtmäss and Glaibasler Kellerabstieg

Saturday we went off to Basel, a great city in the north west part of Switzerland, to visit my Uncle Harald. There were two main events going on this weekend; 1) Herbschtmäss, and 2) Glaibasler Kellerabstieg.

This year is the 542nd Basel Autumn Fair or Herbschtmäss, and is the oldest and largest fair existence in Switzerland! The fairgrounds, spread across the entire city - and in the halls! We took a little boat across the Rhine to get to GrosseBasel for the fair and then wandered around!

Herbschtmäss
The Rhine


We went on the ferris wheel!

Glaibasler Kellerabstieg. Now I did some research on this event when Harald said we would be attending and all I could find was "old town Basel basement descent". To me that sounded creepy and not representative of the actual event (....... well I hoped). I inquired about it upon arriving to Basel and he just laughed at me, telling me I had to wait and see. After dinner, we set out to find our "secrete" basements. Not only did we find one, we found two of 24. The are literally basements in the bottom of businesses that turn into bars. Apparently Basel is very serious about Marti Gras and these basements are only open for 3 days during Marti Gras and this past weekend. I did not find out the significance of last weekend and why they were open. So, I descended some basements and we drank. :)
I feel asleep on the way back to Zurich and my
mean fiancé took a picture

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