Basel

I arrived in Basel Switzerland at 3:00pm on Sunday afternoon. Because our group wasn’t scheduled to meet up until 6:00pm, I located a city map, found the hotel on the map, figured out which tram to take, bought the appropriate ticket, and found my way to the hotel.


Novartis put us up in the Ramada Plaza in Basel. We each had our own excessively fancy room with blinds that raised and lowered automatically, bathroom floors that lit up, and free wi-fi. After relaxing for a bit, I went with Olaf to pick up the others from the train station.


Once everyone had checked in and settled, several of us decided to head out for dinner. We found a fantastic Italian restaurant near the hotel. After dinner, we finished off the evening in the bar on the 31st floor of the hotel. From there we could see the entire city while enjoying our drinks.

On Monday, we toured the Novartis headquarters in Basel, and then visited their research farm outside of the city. I have somewhat mixed feelings about the research; on the one hand, I understand that testing of products on animals is necessary in order to develop medications for pets. On the other hand, animal welfare is extremely important to me, and I found myself interested in their treatment of the animals.

Overall, the quality of life for the research animals is somewhat higher than I would have expected. The research dogs are all healthy happy beagles who participate in drug studies every few weeks. When we asked our tour guide how long the dogs stay in the lab, he told us, “too long;” he explained that all of the researchers get attached to the individual dogs, and many of the dogs have life long bonds with the researchers. When I asked how much human interaction the dogs get, he told us “not enough,” and he said that the dogs seem happiest when participating in a study because that is when they get the most attention. Sadly, they spend much of the rest of their time in kennels. Worse still are the cattle participating in the tick studies. The calves seemed well-fed but had very little room to move around.

However, the lab has found ways to reduce the number of animals needed for studies. A new device referred to as the "Artificial Cat" has replaced the need for animals in flea studies. The fleas are kept inside a metal container and are fed through a cellophane membrane that is similar to animal’s skin. Although I still do not believe I could ever work in animal research, I feel slightly better having seen the passion for animals in the Novartis employees.

After our visit with Novartis, we returned to the hotel for our first genuine free evening. I opted to stay in the hotel, have some dinner and drinks, and relax for a bit.


Tuesday morning, we took a tour of Basel which ended in the market square. We actually had a bit of free time, so I went to a few of the shops and then headed to the ancient art museum. The museum had three floors of Greek and Roman statuary, vases, weaponry, and armor. Additionally, the basement of the museum housed a fantastic collection of Egyptian relics, including the remains of mummified human on full display.

After the museum, I set out to find food. The food was wonderful, but my lunch was interrupted when a vagrant man entered the restaurant and began yelling at the waitress and customers. At one point, he actually chased the waitress through the restaurant yelling at her in German, “You will pay! You will pay!” He tried to yell at me as well, but I told him I did not understand, and he left me alone. The wait staff was about to call the police when the man ran out of the restaurant with a flask of wine not to be seen again.

After my scary but delicious lunch, I met back up with the group and we headed to the airport to travel to Berlin!