My favourite part of Basel is the International headquarters of a well known company (which I will not name), known as The Campus of Knowledge, where I may have worked for almost half a decade.
The Campus of Knowledge is located between the French border and the Rhine river and is essentially a gated city of its own, only accessible to company employees. It has its very own transport system, fire department, hospital, as well as post offices, helicopter landing pads and dozens of restaurants.
Nearly all the buildings and objects on the Campus were designed and constructed by the most famous architects in the world - Herzog & deMeuron, Gehry, Serra and many more - the old chemical factories being the only exception. Until recently, an internal policy only allowed for buildings of less than 50 Meters in height; thus you will never get the feeling of living in a concrete jungle. The spaces in between the buildings are taken up by white granite streets, which are cleaned twice a day and shine beautifully when the sun is bright.
On the bank of the Rhine river, they recently built a magnificent promenade spanning from the Dreirosenbrücke (Basel's busiest bridge) to the french border, which is open to the public and features among other things a 2-star-Michelin restaurant.
In all of Basel and perhaps even in all Switzerland, the Campus of Knowledge is the most cosmopolitan, prestigious place you can be in. Everybody speaks English, and if people do converse in their native tongue, they only do so among close friends. Moreover, they would most often do so not in German, but in an entirely foreign language such as Hindi, Japanese or another of the 90+ languages spoken by the company' employees. People on the Campus are very open minded and well educated; a result of the company hiring only the most qualified and team-oriented people they can find on the globe.
The most creepily fascinating thing I've ever seen is the Campus on weekends. This perfect, utopian place, which serves as a workplace for ten-thousand employees during the week is completely empty - no signs of life whatsoever. Nobody lives on the Campus, save for one stray cat and the animals in the laboratories. On top of that, the birds that sing while you walk through the streets aren't real, they're actually just sound boxes hidden in the trees.
When I first went to the campus on a weekend, I was unwittingly reminded of the "nuke town" scene from the latest Indiana Jones movie as well as the first installment of the Resident Evil franchise; the feeling of being the only sentient being in a flawless, futuristic place that has been abandoned and quarantined by humanity due to an experiment gone wrong.
Taking a stroll through the Campus on the weekends is just about the coolest thing ever, although you should have a good reason for being there, even if you're an employee, as Security might suspect you of plotting some form sabotage. This has happened at least once before: a frustrated employee once poisoned the former CEO's Aquarium, resulting in a multi million dollar damage.
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