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    This City Tram Serves THREE Countries!



    This City Tram Serves THREE Countries!

    Welcome to Basel, where you can have breakfast in Switzerland, lunch in France, and dinner in Germany, all using one tram network.

    Discord: https://discord.gg/jJsqkhyqz4

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    Classy Whale – at-least-weekly misadventures with trains and transit!

    0:00 – Introduction
    0:57 – Riding Into Downtown
    2:27 – Line 3 to France
    3:49 – Saint-Louis
    4:30 – A Misadventure on SNCF
    5:50 – Line 11 to Rodersdorf and Leymen
    8:10 – Riding Some Vintage Trams
    9:58 – Line 8 to Germany

    Germany picture in thumbnail: Wladyslaw, CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

    47 Comments

    3. @aoilpe on

      5:39 The compartments you find only in the pilot car / cap car…
      Btw , until the 1960’s there were lines to Saint Louis eglise and to Hunningue in France and
      to Lörrach in Germany already.
      Now there are ideas to connect the 8 from Weil to Riehen/CH and further to Lörrach.
      Euroairport Basel Mulhouse (Freiburg) is the only real international airport in the world. To Basel BSL for Mulhouse MLH and a divided terminal to serve both countries plus a border free road access for the Swiss…

    4. @claudioclaudio8383 on

      Little extra information, the trams already went to St.Louis long time ago. Until 1957 and the loop was around the war memorial. This is why the war memorial has this form. Than France didn’t want the tram no more and a bus was installed. But now the tram is back.🎉

    5. @danieloehler2494 on

      The first tram line to Germany has been line 6 to Lörrach from 1919 until 1967. During the Nazi rule and after WW II passengers had to change tram cars at the border. Today they have a tri-national S-Bahn service including a line to Lörrach an farther to Zell.
      The local dialect in Southern Alsace and in the German border region is quite similar to Swiss German.

    6. @matthewconstantine5015 on

      Man, the border check at the end reminded me of the time my wife & I traveled from Venice to Lyon, with a brief stay in Geneva. We had border checks crossing in and out of Switzerland and saw a bunch of people "randomly" screened by border security. Amazing how everyone who wasn't super white was "randomly" picked for extra questioning.

    8. @florianhug8069 on

      Luckily you have not been controlled cause that "mobility ticket" you get when staying in a hotel is not valid for cross-country travel as well as for the zone Leymen is in😅

    10. @NATO4623 on

      Fun fact ,for Germany You have to do some border checks because to appease the growing right wing cdu and afd ( please correct me if I am wrong ) 😂。

    12. @AnotherSwissYoutubeUser on

      Did you also get to test some of the new TINA Trams that BLT has started using recently? Also will you cover the extensive Bus network too?

      Anyways cool video, I love the public transport, so reliable to get anywhere. The only thing I hate are the wooden seats in the ''Flexcity'' Model, there was a vote for what seats they should do and Wood won because of ''hygene'', really stupid.

    13. @JohnDoe-ps4kx on

      "… barely glancing at my passport …"
      — well yeah, you're white
      "… and asking a few more questions of a couple who appear to be from an African country."
      — ¯_(ツ)_/¯

    14. @WilVincent88 on

      I did a field trip once to each of the countries, via EuroAirport. I cocked up thinking we were going into Switzerland first and bought some duty free cigarettes, only to find out we were actually going into Germany. I remember we went from Mullhouse to Basel, and pulled over at a service station just before the border where the coach driver told us 'Go get lunch'. I'm glad he did as I remember seeing the insane prices for a sandwich once we crossed the border!

      Freiberg is such a beautiful city and a must for every urban planner if you ever get the chance. Just don't turn up late to your hotel like we did on our trip. Without some careful negotiations, we almost had to spend a night sleeping on the coach! There's also a great book called 'Green Cities' that focuses on Freiberg, from anti nuclear energy, to how they actually build infrastructure alongside developments, so there's no need to rely on a car (In fact, they are banned from the city centre IIRC).

    16. @rudolf7189 on

      Als Einwohner von Basel musste ich mir das Video natürlich ansehen… Gut und sauber gemacht, einzig das Wetter hätte etwas angenehmer sein dürfen… Liebe Grüsse ais Basel…

    20. @JohnResalb on

      For your viewers – I have never seen rain in all of the several times I have been in Switzerland (it beats me why these UTubers insist on making their films in the depth of winter anymore than you'd want to chase all over NYC suburbs in January!!!).
      Next point – always check the DIRECTION destination panel of your train (if you don't wish to parler with le conducteur).
      Final point – Mulhouse has one of the most famous railway museums in all of Europe, a touch even more spectacular than its sister at York City in England.
      Again, what do you feel like seeing in the depths of winter – just get back in the train/tram and keep warm.!

    27. @NeutronMWT on

      Le bonjour de Saint-Louis. Merci pour la vidéo!
      Avez-vous vu le "Tram-Train" à Mulhouse? Il vient d'une vallée où il utilise les rails de train et ensuite utilise le réseau de tram de Mulhouse.

    29. @kevinhunt3623 on

      I was born and grew up in Rodersdorf. It's great to see a video of this place. It was normal for us to go back and forth between the borders. It was only after I had traveled a lot that I realized how unique it is to live in such an open border area. I would like to see more people experience this feeling of freedom. It's great.

    36. @Alby_Torino on

      This is the only tram network that serves 3 countries, but speaking about tram lines there are at least other 2 lines that cross borders: France – Germany (Strasbourg – Kehl) Switzerland – France (Geneve – Annemasse)

    38. @TheParkanyi on

      Even as a Hungarian, living in an EU and Schengen country, it was so weird yet satisfying to travel with these trams, when I visited Basel.

      Sometimes I think about how lucky I am, that I can just hop on a train or get into my car, and in an hour's notice, I'm in a completely different country! My parents grew up behind the iron curtain. At that time (from 1972), in Hungary people could hold two types of passports: red and blue.

      The red only allowed traveling to "friendly", aka. most, but not all communist countries (Yugoslavia was not friendly to USSR thus also to Hungary), and people could spend at most 30 days abroad in one go.
      With the blue passport you could travel to all Western countries (every three years), but basically no civil person got them. There was only one exception: if you had a relative living abroad in the West, they could send an invitation to have you travel to them once a year.

    42. @e.s.7272 on

      Germany introduced temporary border controls at the border with Switzerland on October 16, 2023. In this context, checks on the cross-border tram line 8 between Basel and Weil am Rhein were also intensified. Since mid-October 2023, over 900 trams on line 8 have been inspected. The main reason for introducing these controls was the persistently high number of irregular migrations across the border, which increasingly affected Germany. The measures aim to protect internal security and reduce unauthorized entries.

    44. @SarahGold on

      Big fan of the trams in Basel. Was able to get from our riverboat to the SBB out to the airport in Zurich much easier than our fellow passengers, but we're the only ones who looked into it.

    45. @nashorn9745 on

      It feels so wrong seeing you on my local tram line. It is so sad that the old trams on line 17 are getting replaced by a new stadler tram that is so horrible. The line 10 is operated like a normal rail line between Basel and Rodersdorf the BLT trams are trains to the french. The BVB on the other hand operates line 3 as a tram route the BVB trams are trams to both the french and the germans. The trains used on the TER line between Basel and Mulhouse are the same CORAIL passenger cars than on Al Atlas trains in Maroc. I hope you enjoyed your stay in my home city.

    46. @TheMauriStar on

      I am a little late to this comment section, but i have to say, this was a infomative yet cozy Video, love to find something like this! Greeting from Germany 😀

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