Museums that hide wonders in the middle of the night. Artifacts that come to life.
Now, I'm literally citing books and movies. "You even stole part of the title from a 1993 children's book and 2006 film!" Very true, good catch. In fact, last Friday I even thought I was trapped in the movie myself: Night at the Museum - Basel edition.
People were talking about it weeks in advance: on Friday, the 17th of January, all museums in Basel open their doors until deep into the night and show the world what they’ve got. Following the stream of art enthusiasts, I too walked over to the kiosk that gave out free tickets for this event to everyone below the age of 26. This magical ticket didn't just allow me to enter all museums for free, but also to take all public transport for free until exactly the point where my Semesterticket - the ticket that allows me to take all public transport without paying in Freiburg - ended. Needless to say, my student wallet was very happy about this.
And so, I was sitting on a train to Basel at 6 pm, having only a small purse with my ID and a few coins on me. A little more than one hour later, I was standing in the middle of the beautiful city of Basel, studying street maps and museum descriptions.
Then the museum hopping began: My friends and I started with the anatomic museum and its 'catacombs'. As a souvenir, I now have pictures of animal skulls surrounded and colonized by flies on my phone - pictures I will never look at again. After, it was the turn of Basel's Münster - the central church. When I entered the church, I caught the last part of a concert of alternative music that was going on. Via a small, dark spiral staircase, I managed to go up to the second level of the church and watched it spread out below me. I watched the musicians put away their instruments and the people laughing and talking to their families and friends. Standing there, looking down, I felt like I paused my own life for a second to watch others live theirs.
Once I tore myself away from this feeling, the adventure continued: the cartoon museum - one of my absolute highlights. From a combination of dark, meaningful charcoal drawings, over funny, meaningless little sketches all the way to a live drawing - music - text performance on saving whales, it was a bundle of everything I love.
And where should one go after a museum that has everything? A museum that has an even bigger, more chaotic everything: Museum Tinguely. After a final stop at the Museum of Cultures - beautiful - my friends and I finally headed back to the train station and I fell asleep sitting on the ground of the last train back to Freiburg (01:30 am), tired after one magical night.
Jesler van Houdt