25 / 2 / 00

Basel

I was standing on a really busy corner on Aeschenplatz in Basel. It was hard to move among people stepping off trams as well as everything else, the telephone boxes, kiosks and public toilets. Then suddenly a funny thing happened: these little structures appeared to me as miniatures of prominent buildings nearby. The Judd building turned into four telephone boxes, the Botta building became an advertisement column, the Hilton hotel was the bus station and the big historical Bahnhof became a funny building which was a kiosk from one side and a public toilet from another side. There was a maroni house, too - a small portable kiosk where they bake chestnuts. I couldn't match this structure to any existing building. A nice woman from the city's office told me that they don't like too many maroni kiosks and such like stands in Basel, after all, people want to know they are in Basel and not somewhere in the Middle East. I thought, how strange, do residents of Basel feel their identity while looking at a Judd or a Botta building?