THEY ARE OPEN

Remember when this whole Corona thing started I wrote a pretty emotional blog with the title "WE ARE OPEN".

Thats 10 weeks ago and today at least for me personally it is another emotional day.  

After I wrote my last blog suddenly all the borders around us got closed. If you have been to Switzerland you know we are a pretty small country. You can cross the country by car in 2.5 hours N-S and 3.5 hours E-W. Our office here in Basel is literally at the boarder to Germany and France. Not only do we ride a lot in those countries but we also have many friends and family over the border. So in fact we were quite impacted by the closure.

And it was really a total closure. Even the smallest border single trail was closed down with a fence, concrete construction or anything else making it clear that you have to stop. Military in the middle of the forrest with machine guns... it felt like war also of course it was not. I am not saying this did not make sense but it felt strange being locked in in our tiny island not being able to see and meet your business partners, families and friends on the other side... I can only start to understand really now how it felt for the East Germans 30 years ago when the wall came down (also of course I would never compare the two situations)



So today June 15th the borders in Europe reopened. Originally I wanted to ride the whole day and cross at least 40 times a border between Switzerland, France and Germany. But as bicycles are the new toilet paper (at least thats what CNN online said) we are super busy here and I just went for a 2 hour lunch ride. I still crossed 10 times a border between Switzerland-France-Germany and it felt really good to do so.

Here comes a small gallery of the ride that was a mix between road and gravel

In my last blog I also mentioned that there are so many questions in this world currently (and actually since a week there are even more) and so few answers. I still think that's the case. On today's ride, actually just on the border between France and Germany, I found at least somebody (the anarchist trans girl) that has found a simple answer for herself - even though personally I would like to approach the current situation a bit differently (at least you see I have my Swiss humour back....)




And actually I found another answer already 10 years ago when I visited Berlin and found that graffiti on a leftover bit of the Berlin Wall. 


I wish you all the best and stay healthy