Using visual art and objects and also audio, this museum, housed in an ornate 17th century building, the Hôtel of Saint Aignan, tells stories of the roots of the Jewish religion and peoples, including various traditions and practices in different Jewish communities, and a variety of interesting life stories (especially from communities in France and other parts of western Europe), up to the European community’s near-complete decimation by the Nazis.

Some of the most impressive gems here were the story of Gracia Nasi, a Portuguese Marrano Jew (forced to convert to Christianity) who sought to help other oppressed Jews and to take action–via an embargo!–against Spain; a late 19th century sukkah made of wood and beautifully painted; a beautifully arranged display of books for study and praryer; and a huge litter of ancient gravestones excavated from various neighborhoods in Paris.

AM notes that she had never been made to feel quite so unwelcome in a museum, down to what MM joked was the “expulsion of the Jews at [rather than in] 5:50,” when we were unceremoniously rushed out of the building at least 10 minutes before the posted closing time.

We went from this millennial trip to the mundane as we walked through the Marais, the Jewish Quarter, eying the kosher restaurants and delicatessens.

Probably most profound in this area was our earlier-in-the-day stop at the Deportation Memorial, just below Notre Dame. Dedicated in the 60s and with a distinctly 60s artistic bent, this oppressively close space contains lights for the many deportees (Jewish and otherwise) and a series of beautiful quotations, including this favorite:

I dreamed so strongly about you — I walked so much, talked so much, loved your shadow so much, that there is nothing left of you. the only thing left is the shadow between shadows, the one that will come back to mind.

– Robert Desnos, Ensoleillée

AM was especially interested in seeing the Dada collection, and MM discovered Picabia’s vast ouvré. Duchamp/R. Mutt’s urinal, sadly, was not on display, but many other interesting pieces and small press goodies were. We both admired the Chagalls, of course, and we argued a bit (an old argument) about Pollock.

MM was thrilled to see Matisse’s woman in a “Romanian Blouse.” But in the end it was too much: we didn’t even make it beyond WWII to the provocative contemporary art on the next floor. More photos here.

The owner, Claude, was bemused that two guests from the Royal St. Michel (with that name, perhaps he thought it was a 5-star hotel) would walk five blocks to his small shop, but the price was much better and we left our one-load bag with him and in broken French/English arranged to pick it up in the evening–much better than hassling with our hotel’s exorbitant itemized laundry list.

Bargain hunters will appreciate that our 2nd class seats, backwards or no, cost 18 Swiss Francs a piece: something like $15. We have the new service’s opening specials in May and especially OH’s determination and early morning sensibility to thank for that.

It turns out that facing backwards at a very smooth 200+ mph isn’t nearly as uncomfortable as we’d expected. Wondering what it looks like? Something like this:

Three and a half hours later we were in Paris, enduring the shift from 200 mph to 30 mph on the crowded, standing-room-only metro, lugging our stuff. True to AM’s already well-established navigational skills,, global positioning intuition (hereafter referred to as GPI), we emerged from the subway within 10 feet of our hotel. The Royal Hotel Saint-Michel was a bit of quiet in France’s equivalent of the modern, cleaned-up Times Square (truly the Place St. Michel on the Left Bank).

We’ve quickly discovered that Paris is a matter of direction: on one side are at least 100 restaurants beckoning tourists to eat dinner for as little as 10 euros. An immediate right brings us to the broad St. Michel and then the quay, with the Seine and Notre Dame right before us.

Our walk through the Ile de la Cité brought us to a delightful dinner (this time on the sidewalk rather than a veranda) overlooking a small park where locals played more pétanque and practiced tai chi (but not together). (See an annotated photo here.) Then on to the Pont-Neuf, where we spontaneously hopped on a boat tour despite the growing darkness. Much to our delight, the boat’s large spotlights created dramatic lighting for every major sight along the Seine, from bridges to buildings to a crowded milonga on the quay (more toe-stepping and bumping than ochoes for those tango-ers, I’m sure) to under-bridge camping and unfazed lovers to our final spectacular sight, the Eiffel Tower.

However, for the tourist seeking precise knowledge, beware: even when speaking English, the heavily French-accented tour guide was close to incomprehensible to us. (Fortunately, the native French-speaker behind us was giving her own translation to her friend, so we weren’t left in the verbal dark.)

It was Paris at its best: magnificent 18th c. buildings, giant statues of generals of former wars contrasting with the vibrance of throngs of young people crowded along the Seine truly participating in joie de vie. AM has long been a Paris skeptic (from afar), but it appears she’s giving in.

We ended up on another beautiful veranda eating Thai food, where AM was able to ogle and then finally make friends with Luna the Swiss mountain dog and MM refused to ogle the Thai hostess with her highly slit skirt and Swiss-Thai accent. Pad Thai, MM notes, is the same anywhere in the world.

Colmar was our major destination, a small city about an hour south of Strasbourg. The old city is a time travel experience: the small cobblestone streets are lined with 15th and 16th century homes with brightly painted exteriors and multi-colored shutters. The small canal that runs through one neighborhood is billed as a mini-Venice, but really is a pleasant foil to the wonderful old buildings that line the canal, and the many flowers that are pleasantly laid out along its edge. France feels distinctly different from Switzerland, even this part of France with its German influences (Alsace has been alternately part of Germany and France over the last several hundred years).

In the central plaza of the town is one of the more remarkable museums we’ve seen so far, the Unterlinden. The building, a former convent, houses an extensive selection of mostly Christian art, including a dramatic altarpiece adorned with bronze statues and, more interestingly, a series of side-panels in oil by Matthias Grünewald, the Issenheim Altarpiece, all a tribute to St. Anthony.

The convent atmosphere and highly charged religious images were splendidly painted by some of the most important artists of the period, but MM was perhaps most struck by an early still life of a surgeon’s cabinet from the 16th c., said to be the first known still life to be painted since antiquity (!?).

About four streets down from the museum was a large wooden synagogue (circa ?). The plaque on the outside wall was a haunting revelation of the history of the Jews in all of France, a commemoration to the Jews of Colmar who were deported to concentration camps and never returned.

Our visits to two nearby wine-making villages were aided by the affable Yves, who drove us (in a clone of ME’s 1994 Dodge Infinity, color and all) past what he claimed was “the real” Statue of Liberty, lodged in a traffic circle. (Bartholdi, the sculptor responsible for France’s famous gift to the U.S., is one of Colmar’s best-known residents.)

Our first village, Riquewihr, was a uniquely well-preserved walled-in medieval town surrounded by vineyards. It’s Disneyland-like buildings and overall layout reminded AM of her visit (with Aa) to Rothenburg ob der Tauber in Bavaria. The beauty of this town might have been better appreciated if we had stayed overnight and avoided tourists by staying on the side streets. However, because of time limitations–Yves was waiting for us at the foot of the town gates–we could only jostle with the other tourists down the main, shop-laden street.

Yves sensed our disappointment and promised us that one half-hour in the neighboring town, Eguisheim, would provide a better experience, and he was right. In this equally pretty but a bit less crowded town, we were able to slip into the Joseph Freudenreich tasting room and sample some of the regions fine wines. One of our favorites was the 2006 Alsace rosé, which we look forward to imbibing in the very near future.

We all met up again today in Zürich after our various adventures, and explored the old city in Zürich and window-shopped a bit a bit (not to mention visiting a fine antiquarian bookstore or two).

We must really thank CH for the tip about Marc Chagall’s windows in the Fraumünster; somehow, none of the info AM looked at (though admittedly, this was not much) pointed out these gems, and it was only in the afternoon that the necessity of a trip across the river to see them was remembered. These windows, executed in the late 60s, are not to be missed: though Chagall’s work often seems to glow of its own accord, this afternoon the ethereal glow was heightened by the sunny day outside and the striking distinction between each differently-colored panel. These photos don’t begin to do justice, even on the level of documentation (nor, really, do the images provided by this google search, though many come a bit closer).

Can you find MM in this one?

The windows are even more remarkable for their unobtrusive integration into a 17th century church with partially intact frescoes framing them in a glowing timeliness.

Then, on to the warm and gracious home of OH’s daughter DL and family, with a wonderful home-cooked dinner on (yet another) veranda. MM has (re?)discovered gazpacho, and the company was delightful.

However, OH demonstrated extraordinary driving prowess and complete command of his high gears–although his usual loquacious persona transformed into an eerie silence on the tight curves. Passing motorcyclists had speed and agility, and the occasional brave bicyclist was saddled with inertia and fatigue. Although we were above the tree line, the small villages far below, there was still grass and grazing cows everywhere, their bells serenading us along our passage. Although “fahrt” means autoway in Swiss, on this particular route it signified the more usual meaning. Remarkably, there were old farm houses far above us, a clear reminder that the Swiss utilize every parcel of land even though some of their tractors face an incline that seemed to be at least 45 degrees.

Once over the pass, the road widened and straightened and we headed for Braunwald, a resort town high above the meadow that required a funicular to reach the summit. Because the town is unreachable by car, we were able to enjoy a leisurely stroll to an old family hotel and dine on the veranda with its magnificent view of the meadow below and the surrounding mountains: no postcard is able to breach the gap between the pretty picture and the sublime pastoral elegance of Switzerland’s landscape.

I suggested to OH we take the flat route home, around the mountains, and he gladly agreed. On the way back we could talk about our experience without my furtive glances below.

I tried not to wail upon discovering that it appears to be closed not just today, but until August 25th!

There was nothing to do but peer into the very dark windows and then traipse down the oh-so-hot Speigelgasse to no. 14, where Lenin lived in exile, pre-revolution. Just a plaque here, on the building, and an ironic trace of the building’s history in the design- and puzzle-shop’s window downstairs:

Finding a bed was none too easy; it turns out this is (at least in part) because a major conference of applied and industrial mathematicians has begun today. I discovered this in the evening shortly after I strolled up onto the university grounds and into a manicured-but-not-too-much garden that, after several terraces, gave way to an idyllic sunset view towards the city:

As I made my way back down off the hill, I ran smack into a wall of name-tagged folk buzzing and milling and sipping wine at the 6th annual International Congress on Industrial and Applied Mathematics’ opening reception.

I wandered around the city, had a chicken kebab and found yet another veranda with a water view to eat on (the thing in Switzerland, I suppose, though this version was merely a bench), and wandered some more. Zürich is full–CHOCK full–of antiquarian booksellers. Luckily, they are books mostly in languages I cannot read. After the Tinguely, my bag is already substantially heavier than when we set off.

The dorm-room bed I found, at Hotel Martahaus, turned out to be a steal at about 40 ch including breakfast, bedding and towel, internet access, and an oh-so-clean non-bunk, cordoned-off, single-bed area with chair, lamp, and locker–all right at the edge of old town and next to the university and the train station. The place is filled to the gills with pocket-protector wearing conference attendees.

The Tinguely Museum is simply a place one must go. Given MM’s experience, we might even say it is best if one knows nothing concrete about Jean Tinguely ahead of time. And since it is highly unlikely these pieces will ever travel in great number—a virtual army of highly conscientious dis- and re-assemblers would be required—it alone makes Basel well worth a trip. (Not that there aren’t other reasons, mind you.)

The current exhibition at the Tinguely, a fairly comprehensive retrospective of the Situationist International and its satellite movements, contains films (click here to see MM engrossed[?] in Debord’s Society of the Spectacle), art (detourned and otherwise), and delightful publications, objects, and documents. If one can curate an exhibition of movements that sought, at least in some part, to be uncuratable, then this was well done. Grafitti, loose pamphlets, multiple films competing with each other, and an installation, something like bleachers, that necessitated walking up and over to parts of the exhibit, and also viewing things from different perspectives.

For MM, the Tinguely Museum was more than an educational visit. It was a tour de force allowing the unitiated to slowly enter the world of Jean Tinguely. So slowly, with jerry-rigged, rusted iron parts welded into episodic moving machines—think zany bicycle—that tantalized the viewer with the artist’s cleverness. This technique quickly explodes into giant abstract machines that challenge art and space, and culminate in the ultimate Grosse Méta Maxi-Maxi Utopia, a complex movement of interchanging parts filling a giant room, bespeaking a life of sheer devotion to art and fueled by genius. One can look at all the reproductions in all the books and never experience the genius of the man until one has been in that huge room, climbing over the parts, wondering how many years it took until his vision could become this reality. He is a giant, and MM strode atop his masterpiece.

[Video #2 here.]

AM was equally delighted, noting that Tinguely’s work—especially the dustier, rustier pieces, not to mention all the rattling, jangling, and gear-turning—were about as steampunk as you can get (electricity notwithstanding). So. Much. Fun. See more photos from the Tinguely Museum. (And as an added bonus, the bookstore was, um, great. We left many kilos heavier, and AM actually found the printed reproductions of Duchamp’s “rotoreliefs” she’d been looking for…)

Unfortunately, there was no time to hit the Beyerof Museum, which sounds well worth the visit. (As it was, we could easily have spent another several hours at the Tinguely.) Our visit to Basel was really limited to travel to the museum and back, which seems sad… but extremely satisfying, strangely.