If you travel a lot in Europe, there is a good chance that you will, sooner or later, pass through EuroAirport. This airport – which is located near prime hiking areas such as Lake Constance and the Black Forest and used a lot by low-cost airlines including Wizz and Easyjet – is the only airport in the world with three IATA codes, is jointly administered by two national authorities (France’s and Switzerland’s) and serves three cities in three countries.
Basel (in Switzerland) is the nearest of the three cities (although the airport is mainly on French soil) but also by far the most expensive and not great value for a brief stopover, while Freiburg (in Germany) is a long way out (75 km and a one-hour bus ride away which will set you back € 23 p.p.).
So why not base yourself in the Alsatian town of Mulhouse while you are waiting for your connecting flight?
You may have never heard of Mulhouse before, but it is one of the main cities of France’s Grand Est region and the second largest town in the ancient province of Alsace (behind Strasbourg).
Mulhouse goes back at least 1000 years and has many ancient buildings to show for its rich and varied history, …
… but it was also one of the first French towns to welcome the dawn of the Machine Age when, in the mid 19th century, it became a centre of the country’s engineering and textile industries.
At the time, Mulhouse was known as the “City of a Thousand Chimneys”, and although fuming smokestacks are today no longer part of the urban scenery, the local Peugeot factory is still the largest private employer in the entire province of Alsace.
Even the urban art works in Mulhouse reflect the city’s contrasting traditions: while some turn to the past and to comfortably familiar themes …
… others take a decidedly more adventurous and forward-looking approach.
There is, however, one constant in Mulhouse’s history: the existence of several near-by borders. Switzerland is just down the road from here …
… and so is, more importantly perhaps, the demarcation line between German-speaking and French-speaking Europe.
The small passage near the “Mulhouse Cathedral” (it is, in fact, a Calvinist church) was once – when Mulhouse was still called Mühlhausen and part of Germany – known as the Dark Lane, the Finstere Gasse …
… but then the French arrived and brought Enlightenment with them, most likely in the form of some sort of street lighting equipment. And voilà, the Alleyway of Darkness became the Rue de la Lanterne.
There is certainly a lot of history to discover on a walk through the town centre, and despite the fact that Mulhouse took a much more determined leap into the new (industrial) world than Alsatian bijou towns such as Colmar and Kaysersberg, the city does not look as though it felt totally at ease in the Modern Age.
Many street corners have a distinctly pre-WWI feel about them, and you could set a period movie in many parts of Mulhouse without changing anything at all.
Everywhere in Mulhouse, the past is still present, and you could easily pass an entire day going from one of the many antiques shops to the next, letting them transport you to times gone-by.
But where to go for a short green-space walk in Mulhouse? The Park Steinbach certainly looks promising from the outside …
… and is the place to go when all you want is a relaxing stroll and somewhere to rest for 15 minutes or so.
However, it offers little in terms of optical diversion.
If that is what you are looking for, you are better off at the Square de la Bourse in the town centre where museum-wall-sized images of nature – and of what man has done to it – create challenging contrasts to their garden-like surroundings.
All of this blends into an interesting mix of the old, the very old and the very new …
… and is certainly enough to hold your attention for a brief stopover.
