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We’d crossed over to the other side of the river to walk along the Ober Rheinweg to the next bridge, the iconic Mittlere Brücke, allowing us to look at the Grossbasel Altstadt from a distance. The ferry on this side left from a small dock and made a convenient crossing to a dock, currently being reconstructed, at the foot of the Basler Münster, the cathedral. This was the Münster-Fähre, the cathedral ferry, operated by a boat called Leu. The ferry ran continuously, so I just stepped on as it arrived at the dock. The fare was just CHF 2, each way, collected in cash by the operator mid-stream.

When it was time to cast off the operator heaved a large steel bar near the bow of the boat from one side to the other. This was attached to the tether cable, and had the effect of pulling the boat in the different direction, and hence back across the river. Once the fares were collected the operator withdrew to his cabin and carried on reading his book, with one arm on the tiller to fine-tune the angle of the boat to the current, and hopefully one eye open for any other river traffic. When we arrived at the base of the Basler Münster I stayed aboard for the return trip, so we could continue our planned walk; by now my wife had figured out where I’d disappeared to.

All reaction ferries rely on the current of the river working against the angle of the boat or a movable underwater “wing”, to drive the boat perpendicular to the current, and across the river. Vital to this is a cable that keeps the boat going across the river and not just being swept downstream, and it is in this cable arrangement where these ferries tend to differ based on the details of the crossing. For this ferry there was a cable held fairly tightly high across the river, and the boat was attached to this near the bow via a tether, another cable running on a pulley. What added to the fun of the Münster-Fähre was that there was a Swiss flag attached to the pulley and the tether cable was filled with smaller flags.

We very much enjoyed our visit to Basel, but it was very much a short stopover. Walking the Altstadt, and taking a ferry was good fun. The old-town is full of characterful old buildings and alleyways, but there are many museums and galleries worthy of your time if you have a longer stay, and frequent trams if you don’t want to walk. Of course the Altstadt also has plenty of restaurants and tourist shops—yes, we bought some Swiss chocolate, it did taste very good, but was it really worth the exorbitant price?

There are also other ferries that make longer trips along the Rhine, or you can take a tourist cruise. Coming from Québec, and seeing how the city of Basel blends into Germany and France, we were conscious of how unilingually German it was—although the local Basel dialect looked very quirky to our minds trained in standard German. But as in most of Switzerland, we were hard put to find anyone who did not speak excellent English.

We continued our walk and crossed back over the Rhine on the next bridge downstream, the Mittlere Brücke, and from there we could see another similar ferry, the Klingental-Fähre (the Vogel Gryff). There are in fact four ferry crossings like this in Basel, St. Alban-Fähre (the Wild Maa) and the St. Johann-Fähre (the Ueli) being the other two. The ferries have a long history, and have survived the arrival of modern bridges due to the support of Basel volunteers. I guess if we’d done our homework before arriving in Basel I’d have known about all of these and planned a tour to use them all. But our trip to Switzerland was somewhat last-minute and there is a special joy about arriving in a place with little knowledge or expectation, just following your nose and enjoying all the surprises.