No cold coffee: Where you can best spend your time during grey days in Basel
A short stroll through Basel shows the many faces of Basel’s cafés and those who spend time there. These days, it is important to find your favourite place to relax in town.
It is common among city dwellers to spend a rainy afternoon in a café. Some look for a pub with a slowly cooling coffee, while others are looking for fashionable chic and artificial flowers at lunchtime. Cafés also form part of their surroundings and look different depending on which city quarter they are found in. In this way, every part of town has its fitting tavern. Different places, different people, different cafés. These are our suggestions for people who are still looking for their perfect place to relax.
The bedrock at Marktplatz
The “Confiserie Schiesser” needs no introduction – it is an institution of Basel. Located in the middle of the city, it acts as a magnet for tired legs. The confectionery business (both selling and serving sweets) has been the centre of our local café scene since the middle of the 19th century, and this status remains undisputed.
There have been so many rumours about the café on the first floor, including that it is frequented only by the upper class sipping champagne. However, this is wrong. Despite the sophisticated atmosphere, the clientele is very mixed – perhaps more than in other cafés. And as a counterpoint for the Marktplatz across from the city hall, a café needs to be headstrong. All of the premises around Marktplatz display a stately exterior while harbouring a rather democratic interior. The Café Schiesser is also the only café in town which can (and does) hold a candle to the Viennese coffee house. No matter whether you are part of Basel’s old elite or new to the city, a hot chocolate (with extra cream) in the Schiesser is a nice treat from time to time.
Passage through Tellplatz
City squares should be full of people. There are only few spots in Basel that still fulfil this function. One of them is Tellplatz: At most of its corners, there is a café or a restaurant – and since September, a new one has opened which has the same name as the square and forms the counterweight to Schiesser at Marktplatz – “Tellplatz 3”. This place not only offers a warm and welcoming atmosphere despite the dark grey interior, but also an assorted menu of delicacies. Instead of peppermint, for example, there is “Nana Minze”. Even though it opened only recently, the “Tellplatz 3” café is not an insider tip any longer: The food shop with a built-in café attracts hungry Baslers from all over, especially because of its cheese counter.
At lunchtime, most of the café’s visitors are workers sitting on bar stools by the large window or at the long table in the middle – those who do not have time to stay there for the entire afternoon. In tune with the nearby SBB train station, there are constant comings and goings.
Unjustified annoyance with Matthäus quarter
Only recently, a friend from Kleinbasel confessed to me that he avoids Kleinbasel whenever he wants to go for a coffee. He cannot stand the vintage or “Grandma” style in the café’s anymore; the flaking colours are getting on his nerves.
Yet like Berlin, the Matthäus city quarter is certainly not lacking when it comes to beautiful pubs. In recent times, cafés and hip spots have sprung up like mushrooms: Avant-Gouz, zum Onkel, Huckebein, Angel’s Share, SMUK, and many more. It is hard to find a highlight among such abundance, but the “Fourchette” has to be awarded this title. Because if you want to go hipster, then you should do it full-on. Roughly plastered walls, fruit bowl lamps hanging from the ceiling, food and drinks are served in grandmother’s porcelain. The café’s speciality: Moroccan tagines.
As it is both café and restaurant, the cosy “Fourchette” invites to stay for a little while longer. After having idled away the afternoon, this can be followed by ordering something for dinner. That is, if you can defend your spot: Often, every table already has a reservation for the evening. The tiny kitchen – it is hard to believe that anything bigger than sandwiches can be produced there – accompanies the atmosphere with the sound of clattering pots.
St. Johann: an obituary, a future, and a castling
Gentrification is trickier on the other side of the Rhine, despite many efforts. This can also be seen in the cafés. The “Saint Louis”, for instance, felt rustic due to its simple, unaffected layout, even though the silver laptops on tables nevertheless formed part of the interior. The emphasis lies on “felt”, as the café is a thing of the past in its current form. After the “Saint Louis” had been a fixed meeting spot for people just passing through as well as for residents, the management handed over the reins to Anina Marina Michel after five years. The new manager aims to reopen the café as “Café Bar Louise” with a fresh coat of paint and a still undefined “realignment” after this year’s Fasnacht. We hope for a fitting replacement and will know more in March.
For now, we enter the “Café Jêle” into the St. Johann competition. The café at the corner of Davidsbodenstrasse and Mülhauserstrasse is inconspicuous, looking like a day nursery across from the Nordbahnhof. The seemingly tasteless interior is in reality a perfect harmony of various aesthetic mistakes. No distraction there, so one can focus on more important things such as the rather nice lentil soup – if the coffee is not enough.
Wes Anderson’s tearoom
Going back to Marktplatz, one tearoom must not be left out of this selection. Traditionally, people associate tearooms with dark spaces, creaking leather chairs, steaming hot tea, huge newspapers and serious faces. However, the tearoom at the “Mock” bakery proves the opposite: light and almost refreshing, but still with the right amount of solidity and white leather. It is easy to relax at the back of the bakery. The interior is located somewhere between a bistro and a cruise liner – it could well be the set for a Wes Anderson film. This makes the “Mock” café attractive for all those who are looking for a quiet oasis in the middle of the city and do not want to go to Schiesser. A good tearoom is not only a place for tea but also offers a relaxed atmosphere. This can be found here.
Organisations demand clear facts about Leibstadt nuclear power plant damage
More than a dozen Swiss and German organisations are calling for clarity about the cause of corrosion damage to the Leibstadt nuclear power plant, which has been shut down for months.
The topic was discussed in Basel’s cantonal parliament on Wednesday, and a group consisting of the Social Democrats (SP) of Switzerland, the Green Party of Switzerland, and Greenpeace on Saturday sent an open letter to the Federal Government and the Atomic Supervisory Authority (ENSI).
While damage including rusting fuel rods are taken seriously by power plant managers and political authorities, a scientific statement regarding the reason behind such damage has not yet been made, the group claims. The tiny corrosion damages could result in leaks, which in turn could cause a cascade of self-accelerating chemical and nuclear reactions, they said.
Demand for open information
The organisations are calling for open and proactive information to be released and also for critical experts to become part of the ENSI, the ENSI council, and the Federal Commission for Nuclear Security (KNS). Leibstadt must not return to service before these demands have been fulfilled, the group says. Likewise, in a letter to the ENSI, the Tri-national Nuclear Protective Association (TRAS) also demands that Leibstadt remains shut down. The danger of a “Black Box” is too large, the group states, adding that it hopes that independent experts will be permitted to investigate the power plant.
The Leibstadt plant has been out of action since August last year. It could not be powered up again after its annual inspection after oxidation was detected on several fuel rod hulls. In the meantime, the ENSI has permitted the authorisation for the core loading of the reactor. The preparations for the renewed launch of the power plant are already on track, it was stated earlier this month.
Resolution in Grand Council of Basel
In the past few days, the German Federal State of Baden-Württemberg and the Federal Government of Vorarlberg have also demanded a clarification of these problems. The cantonal parliament of Basel-Stadt on Wednesday discussed a resolution regarding the Leibstadt power plant. This paper likewise requested that technical problems were resolved before a return to service. It received a support of 61 Yes-votes against 34 No-votes – and therefore did not reach the necessary majority of two thirds for an authorisation.