Founded 2,000 years ago on the Rhine at the point present-day Switzerland meets both the French and German borders, the river was a watery information highway linking Basel to other European centres of learning. Its medieval and Renaissance architecture gives Basel the outward appearance of other lovely middle European towns, but it has a distinctive DNA. Orson Welles' character Harry Lime delivers a famous quip on its reputation in the classic 1949 film The Third Man: “In Switzerland they had brotherly love, they had 500 years of democracy and peace – and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.” Switzerland, after all, is a nation stereotyped for pride in discreet banking and punctual trains. Every sound generated a vividly changing image, with its own consistent form and colour.”Īn ancient Swiss city isn't perhaps the obvious place to kick-start psychedelia. “Every acoustic perception, such as the sound of a door handle or a passing automobile, became transformed into optical perceptions. “Kaleidoscopic, fantastic images surged in on me, alternating, variegated, opening and then closing themselves in circles and spirals, exploding in coloured fountains, rearranging and hybridizing themselves in constant flux,” he wrote in his book LSD – My Problem Child. Hofmann described his trippy trip home with an exactness of scientific observation that contrasts with the psychological wildness of the experience.
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