Maybe it’s the fact we live on an island where we don’t share borders with any other country but there’s something fascinating about there being places in the world where more than two countries meet.
I was on holiday in Switzerland in November and found myself in Basel, so I did a little reading on what there was to do there and found two interesting and related facts.
There is a tram line that runs into Germany, and that once it crosses into Germany that tram line has a stop next to a footbridge that allows you to walk into France.
Crossing the River Rhine, the Three Countries Bridge connects two of the largest nations in Europe, with the Swiss border only being slightly downstream, hence the name.
After a morning of sightseeing, little ferry rides and cathedrals, in Basel. I decided I didn’t have much choice – a beer in each of the three countries seemed very much like my kind of way to spend an afternoon.
The journey got off to an unfortunate start when I got on Tram 8 towards what I thought was the right tram stop. But no, confusingly there are two bridges, both with tram stops on the same route, called some version of ‘three countries/three lands bridge’.
I was on the right route but this tram stopped short. I got my Dreilanderbrucke and my Dreirosenbrucke mixed up. We’ve all been there.
Anyway I only spent about three minutes on the outskirts of Basel before the tram for the rest of the journey arrived.
Not that it got far before it the reached German border and the police got on board, as the country has temporarily brought back border controls despite being part of the Schengen area.
Everyone got their passports checked quickly and soon I was next to the Three Countries Bridge, which is entirely for pedestrians and cyclists and the longest single-span bridge of its kind of the world.
Deciding to start furthest out I walked across into France, stopping to take some photos as a container ship sailed on the Rhine beneath me – the bridge has a clearance of 25.5 feet and stretches for 813.6 feet between the river banks, for those wanting details.
In terms of what it is like to walk across it’s an easy enough walk and there’s no traffic due to it being limited to pedestrians and cyclists – although I did see a few mopeds make the crossing as well.
Huningue is a tiny French town and I wasn’t hopeful as I headed towards the main square, which seemed to be setting up its Christmas market.
Nevertheless, there was a strange bar/slot machine/gambling place open and I got a Meteor beer. I had my first sip before I had to move from the bar to a table because they absolutely had to nail up a giant diorama of Santa riding a racehorse that second (of course).
After that it was back across to Germany where I was hoping to find a similar situation.
However Weil En Rhein feels very much like what it is, a bit of a suburb of Basel. It is not flush with places that immediately shout ‘this seems like a place for a beer’.
I did find a cafe that sold bottles of Heineken before encountering a problem I had hoped wouldn’t come up – I had no Euros. I responded that I had no Euros as ‘I did not plan to come to Germany today’ (which sounds mad), luckily Swiss Francs were fine.
However I wasn’t sure a bottle of Heineken really did Germany justice. It is one of the homes of beer after all.
Fortunately I found a smoke-filled sports ‘bar’ around the corner selling pints of Rothaus, a brewery owned by the federal state the town is in.
With that wrong corrected, it was hardly an arduous journey onto country number three, I just got the tram back to Basel city centre, went to the pub and ordered a beer.
Would I have travelled specifically to mainland Europe just to do it? Probably not. Was it a slightly different day out? I think so.
No doubt there are other places in Europe, and the world, where you can do similar – but there probably are not many that make it quite as easy.