Huningue and the Rheinuferweg

One grey day at the end of May, Jan and I were bored. I suggested that we could take a tram to the border and walk across the Three Countries Bridge to see what’s in Huningue. The answer is not much! But it’s a cute little town.I actually ended up going there again with my mum and brother so they could say they’d been in three countries in one day (and also get a glass of wine for cheaper than in Switzerland…)

Place Abbatucci

Place Abbatucci

There’s a white water rafting/kayaking place in Huningue and there turned out to be a competition going on that day with participants from all over France, so that’s what those photos are all about.

We ended up walking back to Basel along the Rheinuferweg – Rhine waterfront path – which connects St. Johanns Park in Basel with Huningue in France. At the moment the part on the French side is only open on weekends while they finish renovating the area that used to be a sewage treatment plant, but as of 2017 it’s supposed to be open during the week as well. Part of the path is the Dreyland Dichterweg, or Three Countires Poet Path, which involves various boards containing poems by poets from the region – in French, German and Swiss German. The total length of the path is only 550m and part of it goes alongside the industrial area, but it’s still quite nice to walk along by the river. I hardly took any photos, but here are the ones I did take:

The first bridge you see up there is the Dreirosenbrücke, literally Three Roses Bridge, but don’t be fooled by the pretty name… there’s nothing pretty about that area! The white bridge on photo two is the Three Countries Bridge with Huningue (France) on the left and Weil am Rhein (Germany) on the right. The final photo is the evidence that we actually walked across the border 😉

If you’re in Basel and want to walk along the path there are two options take a tram (8) or bus (36) to Kleinhüningeranlage and, from there, walk across the bridge into Weil am Rhein (or take the 8 all the way into Weil am Rhein if you prefer), cross the Dreiländerbrücke into Hunigue and turn left to walk along the Rhine. Keep walking until you reach Basel. Alternatively, take a tram (8, 11) to Johanniterbrücke and start walking along the river towards the Dreirosenbrücke. Go under that bridge and just carry on walking until you reach the Dreiländerbrücke. From there, you can cross the bridge back to Germany and take a tram back to Basel. Not a bad little afternoon out!

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Urban golf in Fribourg

Swiss rail has various summer offers, so a few weeks ago we decided to make use of one that involved the train to Fribourg plus a Fribourg city card for 92 francs (that’s roughly 88 euros or 64 pounds) per person. Fribourg, or Freiburg to give it its German name (although at least in this part of German-speaking Switzerland it’s referred to by its French name to distinguish it from the Freiburg in Germany), is right on the border between French and German-speaking Switzerland – officially, it’s a bilingual canton but more people have French as their first language than German (although most people speak both to some degree). Our Fribourg cards included something called Stadtgolf, or urban golf, so we decided to give it a try. Basically you get given a golf club and a ball each plus a map which tells you where the holes are. At those points, you look out for a blue pole and a red pole – the blue one is the start and the red one is the end. Like so:

The target

The holes are dotted about throughout Fribourg, and the leaflet  with the map includes a score chart on the back and, in the middle, brief information about the sites where each holes is located, so what you end up with is a mixture of mini golf, putting and a city tour. An interesting concept, and a bit different to just walking around the town. Jan won, of course! Here are some of the photos I took during our walk/game.

From above

More Switzerland. It really is worth the effort!

A bear with a beer!

The third hole was under this bridge

Action shot!

St Jost’s Chapel (I think?)

A wooden bridge

One of the bridges in Fribourg, the Zähringerbrücke, is jokingly known as the Röstigraben or rösti ditch – the cultural boundary between the German and French-speaking parts of Switzerland. Only the German-speaking Swiss could possibly be uncouth enough to eat grated and fried potatoes – the French speakers are, of course, much more sophisticated 😉 Here’s the Zähringer Bridge, from various angles:

In case you were wondering, the river is the Saane or Saline, depending on which language you prefer. Some more photos of Fribourg:

Aww, how cute!

We found a kitty!

One man and his pet lion…

A lantern had to feature somewhere, obviously.

High up above the rooftops…

By the way, not all the holes were as easy as the first photo seems to suggest. Here’s one of the more difficult ones:

The photo was taken from next to the blue pole. Note the huge wall in between that and the red one? Needless to say, this was not a hole where you could get a hole in one!

The urban golf course involves a lot of walking, up hills and down stairs. It’s a lot of fun though, and if you get tired or bored you can stop at any time. There’s nobody forcing you to complete the course 😉 However, if you do you will have seen pretty much all there is to see in Fribourg/Freiburg. It was a lot of fun and something a bit different to our usual method of just wandering around aimlessly! And the city itself is well worth a visit (honestly though I’ve yet to find anywhere in Switzerland that isn’t gorgeous!) The Fribourg tourism website has more information on urban golf here (and no, they didn’t sponsor me to write this post!). At the time of writing, the price without a city card is CHF 9 for adults and CHF 5 for children. Golf clubs can be picked up/returned from the tourist information centre or, when it’s closed, the bowling alley round the corner.

*I’m linking this post up to the Monday Escape blog hop with Packing My Suitcase and My Travel Monkey*

Travel theme: Bridges

This post was inspired by Elaine at I used to be indecisive, or rather by her take on this week’s travel theme at Where’s my backpack?
The theme is bridges, which are one of my favourite things to photograph, so when I saw Elaine’s post I knew I had to join in!

I’m not sure why I like photographing bridges so much. Perhaps it’s because of what they represent. Without bridges it would be so much more difficult to get anywhere – and I do so hate being stuck in one place for any length of time! (I blame my army upbringing.) Of course, without bridges there would still be boats and planes – and in some instances even the possibility to swim – but those methods aren’t always practical – or would you enjoy swimming across a stream when there’s snow on the ground? 😉

Or maybe I just made all that up so I would sound intellectual and the real reason I have so many photos of bridges is simply because I like the way they look? Many of them are just so beautiful! Others are majestic. With some, I wonder how on Earth anybody ever managed to put them together (there’s a reason I’m a translator and not an engineer!). Anyway – enough rambling from me! Time to get on to the bridges…

With so many photos in my collection, it was really difficult to decide which bridges to include in this post, but to start with I thought I would give you my most recent photograph of a bridge, taken in Luxembourg City on 2 January this year:

This is the Adolphe Bridge, one of the bridges across the gorge that splits Luxembourg City in two. It was built between 1900 and 1903 and is one of those bridges that makes me wonder just how the builders managed.

The next photo is not specifically of a bridge, but it does show some of Stockholm’s many bridges. The city of Stockholm is made up entirely of different islands (14 if I remember correctly), so there are basically bridges everywhere you look.

This photo was taken from the tower of Stockholm City Hall, and as you can see the view is well worth the climb!

Moving on… my next photo shows the St. Nikolaus Bridge in Calw, Germany. Being my adopted home country, Germany may be featuring a few times in this post…

The tiny little building you can see on the bridge is the St. Nikolaus Chapel and the metal statue just in front of it is Hermann Hesse, who was born in Calw. Here’s a better picture of the statue:

Looking at the sky, you wouldn’t believe these photos were taken a few moments apart. I promise you, they were!

Staying in Germany, but moving a little closer to home, this pretty wooden bridge is in Ettlingen – the next town over from Karlsruhe.

The river it crosses is the Alb.

Switching countries again, here are two Dutch bridges. One in Leiden, complete with windmill:

It opens to let ships through.
And one in Delft:

OK, that last one isn’t exactly a bridge in the same way as the others I’ve posted (it’s part of Delft’s Eastern Gate), but it does bridge a canal and it’s rather cool, don’t you think?

Austria next, I think. And a night shot.

The above photo of a bridge over the River Salzach, in Salzburg, was taken in December 2011 – which is why the bridge has Christmas lights on it. In the background you can see the fortress, all lit up.

OK, this post is getting rather long now so I won’t add too many more. Here’s a bridge in Venice, Italy:

Returning to Germany with one from Tübingen:

Not the best photo, but I’m including it so I can also say Tübingen is among the prettiest places in Germany and if you ever find yourself in the area you shoud go!

Another one from Austria – this time from Feldkirch, which I want in purely because I used to live there:

The yellow building is the Landeskonservatorium für Vorarlberg – in other words the music college. The building was originally a Jesiuit school, the Stella Matutina, and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle of Sherlock Holmes fame was once a pupil there!

And now I shall finish off with some photos of the North East of England, because it’s the closest thing to a “where I’m from” I have.
This one is the Lion Bridge in Alnwick, Northumberland – so-named because of the stone lion that stands on it:

Here’s a bridge in Morpeth, the town where I spent most of my childhood holidays (my parents are both from there) and later, after moving up North myself, a few drunken teenage nights:

And finally, here are some of the bridges that cross the River Tyne in Newcastle, including the most famous one – the Tyne Bridge itself.

Wow! Sorry this post has ended up being so long – I was having too much fun to stop! If you would like to see even more bridges – or join in yourself – you need to go here.

All of these photos were taken by me or – in the case of the one from Leiden – my boyfriend. Please do not steal them.