Nation building from Basel to Bristol

ON May 14, 1948, David Ben-Gurion, the head of the Jewish Agency, proclaimed the establishment of the state of Israel. US President Harry S. Truman recognized the new nation on the same day.

The seeds of Israel were, however, sown in Switzerland. The birthplace of the idea was in Basel, a city on the SwissGerman-French border. (In the space of about ten minutes you can walk to three different countries.)

Mind you not just international politics have had their genesis here in Switzerland.

Picture, if you will, a dreary Friday afternoon 80 years ago in 1943 in one of Basel’s major pharmaceutical companies. Dr Albert Hoffman is experimenting on fungus, hoping to extract a cure for migraine. Feeling a bit odd, he decides to call it a day. He makes his way across Rhine, which makes a lazy right hand-turn here.

He heads into the Old Town, through the 700-year-old Spalentor gate tower, and past the elegant 16th century Town Hall. But he sees none of these architectural delights. Instead his eyes are assailed by “an uninterrupted stream of fantastic pictures... a kaleidoscopic play of colours.” And that’s just the good bits.

Because what our Albert had discovered wasn’t a cure for migraine at all, but LSD.

Don’t try this one at home folks!

Today Basel’s charming, rattling trams will deliver you to pubs, clubs, shops and a bewildering range of museums dedicated to everything from puppets to, yes, pharmaceuticals. But for particularly juicy history you don’t even need to go museummooching. Just pop into the Grand Hotel Les Trois Rois for a coffee. There’s no telling what you might come up with. Because this old inn, dating back to 1026, has been midwife to momentous ideas. The eponymous kings, Les Trois Rois in fact – Emperor Conrad II, Heinrich III, and Rudolf III of