Worlds apart

After leaving behind all the wealth and glamour of Geneva, I couldn’t have visited anywhere more different. The tiny village of Biel-Benken in Basel was the complete opposite and probably the most rural area I’ve seen for a long time. Although used to everything being a little more busy, I really didn’t mind the peace and tranquillity – it made a nice break from the normal hustle and bustle.

Houses greatly varied in design in the hillside village where my relatives live. To me it seemed a place where people construct their dream homes after years of saving. They were all pretty big and a few even had swimming pools or large gardens.

At the top of the hill there is a large woodland area and I enjoyed walking around there, despite being slightly worried about getting lost. When you don’t keep a close eye on the exact paths you take, they can all start to look the same very quickly – and there’s no one around to help you out. During over an hour’s wandering I only saw something like three people.

Biel-Benken is also right on the border with France and there are boundary stones in the forest. I didn’t actually realise that was what they were until I showed a picture to my uncle, so it appears I visited France without realising. Unlike Geneva the main language is German, but Swiss-German seems so different to me as a non-native speaker that it’s almost like another language at times. Signs and text weren’t so bad, but when it came to listening to conversations or TV I only could only get a few words. Most are spelt similarly, but the pronunciation and accent create difficulties.

It started snowing during my walk and the landscape looked really great. Flakes of ice fell but luckily that was as strong as it got. Heavy snow would have been extremely frustrating and disorienting – it could have taken much longer find the way get back. And since it gets dark fairly early during winter, who knows what could have happened…

That was the main event of my first day, since I’d slept off some of the tiredness from all the early mornings of our evaluation meeting. On the 13th I woke up earlier and decided to explore the city of Basel itself. I got a bus and a tram into the centre and observed the police strategy of using undercover ticket inspectors to crack down on people who haven’t paid (‘Schwarzfahrer’ in German). Thankfully I had a daily pass so didn’t have to fork out the cash.

The modern centre was mostly shops, with a few older churches and one interesting fountain of sculptures squirting water, parts of which were frozen from the cold weather. But after venturing through a large crimson gateway of a building with a Christmas tree in the courtyard and walking through to the other side, it was like I’d stepped into another city. No traffic, no shops, hardly any people. The architecture was much more authentic, with artwork decorating some walls, and the whole place a lot smaller in scale. I think I vaguely remember seeing parts of this area before on a previous visit, but now I’m in a much better position to appreciate everything.

I walked round yet another Christmas market for a while before using the same route to get back. My night train to Rome was leaving at half past nine, but something else was planned before that. After packing my stuff away and eating dinner, I went with my aunt to a session of the Biel-Benken ‘Gemeinsrat’. It was a meeting to which all local residents are invited, where decision-making takes place on governance of the area. Switzerland is a republic and every region has this system; I was very interested to attend and see how it all works.

Unfortunately I could hardly understand anything the people were saying, but I knew what was on the agenda and I guess it was all going fairly routinely in the first few items, which included general welcoming and financial matters. Just before I left, a sticking point seemed to arise on the issue of advertising regulations: a farmer was questioning the need for such strict guidelines on the basis that they were a waste of time, money and effort. His example was that every year he held a breakfast for locals at his home and, in order to put a sign out showing the information, he had to go through a lengthy application process. In my opinion that’s too much bureaucracy, so I’d like to have seen how the debate continued and what the eventual decision was.

My stay in Basel was a very nice break, but next it’s back to work at the first School Students’ Convention of the Organising Bureau of School Student Unions (OBESSU) taking place in Campobasso, Italy. I will be attending in my role with the English Secondary Students’ Association (ESSA) working on the international liaison sub-committee. Since ESSA is a new organisation, we only have observer status at the convention; member status is a different thing. I’m looking forward to meeting more new people and finding out about the student empowerment mechanisms where they live – hopefully I can get some good ideas on how to move ESSA forward and make lots of useful contacts.