Watching the football in Basel Switzerland

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Basel

Sometimes, when you are on a long trip and far away from home, events happen that you don’t want to miss.

Today, the Grand Final of the Australian National Rugby League competition,  was one of those days, so at 17 days in, it was probably as good a time as any to have a bit of a break from travelling.

We had found ourselves a good campground the night before in Basel, after leaving Mount Titlis. Wifi was very important to us as we needed to live stream the game.  Unfortunately, due to the time differences between Switzerland and Australia, the local Irish pub that would have screened the game was not open at 10am CET.

Camping Waldhort is the largest campground in Switzerland so we thought this was probably our best option to get good wifi.

The campground was probably the perfect place for us really as they were super casual.  I had to smile when the lady who was running reception kept trying to hide her cigarette behind her back as she talked to us about the campground.  She was obviously oblivious to the smell and the smoke wafting from behind her !

Since our main priority was wifi, we asked if we could test it first and identify where it worked.  It seemed that the only location where it would work was immediately across from reception.  It’s not somewhere that we would normally prefer to park, but if this was the only place that wifi would work, then we would have to make a sacrifice this time 🙂

We understood a little later why this campground is so casual.  They all party every night until 5am or 6am.  The campground opens for business at 7am so the lady that checked us in has to be working at this time.  Sure enough, the night we stayed there, they were out the front of reception drinking until 5am.   Any wonder they don’t care what campers do.

We bought our supplies from the mini shop.  It was a little early to be drinking normally, but back home, this game was played at night time, and we couldn’t watch without having a beer.

The wifi connection would really only work outside the motorhome.  It’s a great story for travelling this way though, as it shows that your normal habits don’t have to change simply because you’re in a motorhome.  The fact that we are literally on the other side of the world, but we can set ourselves up outside our motorhome, in a campground, and stream live sport onto a laptop is incredible.

It’s another reason why being in a motorhome is an awesome way to travel.  You don’t miss out on anything if you make a little effort and plan ahead.

When we set ourselves up outside our motorhome, I think our resident drinkers thought we were from NASA or something like it.  The intrigue finally got the better of them after they saw me wriggling in my chair everytime something happened on the screen. Next thing I knew one of them was behind us trying to find out what we were watching. Whilst they had never heard of our game before, they understood the passion we were showing, given their love of soccer.

Finally at about 1pm local time, our game finished and it was time for us to get going.  Usually campgrounds have checkout times of around 10am.  Sometimes they are midday.  Once again, these people were extremely casual and were happy for us to wait for our game to end.  I can’t speak highly enough of them.

Campground review

Camping Waldhort
Heideweg 16
CH – 4153 Reinach Basel

GPS: 47°29’58.6″N 7°36’10.8″E

• Largest campground in Switzerland
• Pemanent residents on site also
• Mini shop
• Fresh bread may be ordered for morning
• Reception will give you free tickets for bus into Basel which takes about 17 minutes
• Free wifi but only within 10m of reception
• Facilities look like they could use a coat of paint but everything worked well and the hot water was some of the best I’ve had in any campground so far.  The taps are also normal taps and not push-in timer taps.
• SFR 43.20 for two people, one motorhome and electricity