A heartwarming story
[Warning: contains mild expletive.]
A co-worker shared a story with me the other day that I feel compelled to share. Before starting, a word about Basel. Quite frankly, there are parts of Basel that could be Newark, but safer and better smelling. See, Basel is the home to a number of pharmaceutical companies and chemical plants, which always makes me wonder why people love swimming in the Rhine so much (back in 1986 there was a massive chemical spill in Basel that supposedly killed everything in the Rhine between Basel and the North Sea). The panoramic view from our offices takes in an odd mix of beautiful church spires and ugly smokestacks. So I can see where people might have a bad impression of Basel if that's what they associate with it. But the fact of the matter is, the downtown is really quite pleasant and attractive and charming and European (Basel, like other Swiss cities, has the advantage of not having been bombed to hell during the world wars), and many of the outlying areas are austere but quite nice. It's no Paris or Prague, but what is? OK, so that's a little background. On with the story (and this better be good after that lead-up)...anyway, my colleague was at a resort in the Alps a couple of years ago having a perfectly nice conversation with the owner of the hotel about where they were from, how they liked Switzerland, etc. Then, when the owner asked where she lived and she said Basel, the owner said without any evident malice "Oh, did you know people call Basel the asshole of Switzerland?" Evidently that more or less killed the the conversation--I mean, how do you respond to something like that? (And I thought calling a place an armpit was bad.) I guess what I'm saying is, if you hear anyone say something like that about Basel, don't believe a word of it--or at least take it with a grain of salt.
A co-worker shared a story with me the other day that I feel compelled to share. Before starting, a word about Basel. Quite frankly, there are parts of Basel that could be Newark, but safer and better smelling. See, Basel is the home to a number of pharmaceutical companies and chemical plants, which always makes me wonder why people love swimming in the Rhine so much (back in 1986 there was a massive chemical spill in Basel that supposedly killed everything in the Rhine between Basel and the North Sea). The panoramic view from our offices takes in an odd mix of beautiful church spires and ugly smokestacks. So I can see where people might have a bad impression of Basel if that's what they associate with it. But the fact of the matter is, the downtown is really quite pleasant and attractive and charming and European (Basel, like other Swiss cities, has the advantage of not having been bombed to hell during the world wars), and many of the outlying areas are austere but quite nice. It's no Paris or Prague, but what is? OK, so that's a little background. On with the story (and this better be good after that lead-up)...anyway, my colleague was at a resort in the Alps a couple of years ago having a perfectly nice conversation with the owner of the hotel about where they were from, how they liked Switzerland, etc. Then, when the owner asked where she lived and she said Basel, the owner said without any evident malice "Oh, did you know people call Basel the asshole of Switzerland?" Evidently that more or less killed the the conversation--I mean, how do you respond to something like that? (And I thought calling a place an armpit was bad.) I guess what I'm saying is, if you hear anyone say something like that about Basel, don't believe a word of it--or at least take it with a grain of salt.
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