I feel like I need to get all my Christmassy posts out of the way before we get any further into January, so here’s the first.
Rheinfelden used to be one town with the River Rhine flowing through it, but then in 1802 when Napoleon Bonepart fixed the border between Switzerland and Germany on the Rhine. Now there are two towns with the same name, one in Switzerland and one in Germany. Switzerland has the pretty, old-town side, while Germany’s Reinfelden isn’t all that nice but was where a Christmas market was being held for one weekend only… and I still needed Christmas markets for my 35 before 35!
We took the train to the Swiss Rheinfelden and started by walking into the old town.
As you can see, it wasn’t the prettiest of days. We were lucky enough to avoid the rain but the heavens were threatening to open at any minute!
Prettiness photographed, it was time to cross the bridge to Germany.
The Christmas market was even tinier than I expected and had very few interesting stands, but I did manage to buy some pumpkin and ginger pasta, and we bought some kind of alcoholic punch from a Peruvian stand.
After that I ate a wild boar sausage, Jan ate some cheese bread thing and we headed back across the river to Switzerland, where we caught a train back to Basel, stopping at the Christmas market there for a Glühwein and to buy a bird feeder for our balcony.
Rheinfelden was the fourth Christmas market to be crossed off my list, and Basel doesn’t count, so that left me with one more Christmas market before I could consider that item complete… stay tuned to see which one I went to.
Confuzzledom 
How interesting! a single city in two countries!
There’s another city like this – Laufenburg also used to be one town and now there is Laufenburg, Switzerland and Laufenburg, Germany separated by the Rhine. That Napoleon has a lot to answer for!
I’d love to know how the tax system works in that town! Does it just depend on which side of the river you are then and you’re in the German or Swiss tax system?? Sorry my mind goes to tax with these quirky sort of things!!
Very pretty town on the Swiss side! Shame that the Christmas market was small. I heard that the German Christmas markets were great!
Yes, the Swiss town will pay tax in Switzerland and the German town will pay tax in Germany. Also people in the Swiss town have Swiss health insurance and vice versa.
Beautiful!
I missed out on the Christmas markets this year, since we went to NYC… I’ll just have to live vicariously through your visits!
I think NYC probably beats Christmas markets to be fair 😉