Back Log

I am going to post back to back, as I have pictures from my last trip, though I am already into my next trip. Bear with me and read on...

During the Sunday of my last trip, I went with two of my colleagues to the Roman ruins just southeast of Basel. The area is called August Raurica and it is really facinating. The settlement dates back to around 60AD and there was a settlement there for several hundred years. Eventually, there was an earthquake and the town was destroyed and eventually buried. The townspeople moved the city closer to the river in subsequent years. In 1961, while digging for construction of homes, they came across the remains of the first town and started excavating. The area that is on display now opened in 1995. (You can read this on the website, if you can read German. I think that my facts are close to correct, based on the tour we took. But don't quote me on any of it!)

So here are pictures from there:

This is the ampitheater that is directly across from the museum. You can tell that they have done a lot of work on it to make it functional - it's pretty obvious that there are new bricks there. They hold concerts here in the Spring/Summer.

This is a wall display of a mosaic tile floor that was found. This is actually about 8ft wide and about 12ft tall. The description also said that there was about another 2-3 ft of tile around the edges depicting "battle pictures" of the top Gladiators at the time. The tiles were about 1/2" squre each.



Ok, so I took this one because it's so strange. Hopefully you can figure out the scenario...

This is the bathhouse for the town, which is pretty impressive in the sheer size of this. I would LOVE a bathroom this big!

We also went to see the Tinguely Fountain in Basel that day and took lots of pictures.

All the pieces are mechanical and move water, so it's pretty interesting to see. I also have video here that I took.

That's it for the "touristy" things from trip 1. It was a whirlwind trip complete with a mental breakdown, but I survived. The subsequent trip home was also whirlwind and drove me and I think everyone else crazy, but I'm back. And I'll tell you more about trip 2 thus far and share more pictures soon....