The Spirit of Rock Tour

Saturday, June 18 - Sunday, June 19 2011

The date was April 24, 2011.  We were in Bellevue, enjoying a nice birthday dinner for Dave with his parents and brother, when the world just got a little more awesome.  A text message was received on Dave’s phone from a certain Nick Johnson: “Journey, Foreigner, Kansas, Night Ranger.  Winterthur, Switzerland.  June 19, 2011.”  Enough said.  The only question we had in that entire beautiful message was, “where is Winterthur?”  Turns out it’s right outside of Zurich and since the concert was on a Sunday we decided to make the most out of a weekend in Switzerland and grouped it together with an overnight trip to Basel. 

Ok, we must admit that we aren’t necessarily die-hard super fans of those groups (well, maybe Journey), but they have always been well represented in our iTunes library.  How can you say no to a lineup that stacked?  But we are getting ahead of ourselves… first to Basel!

We took the train Saturday morning, not in too much of a hurry, anticipating a relaxing day in a low-key Swiss city.  Not having done much prior planning, we were happy to see that our hotel lobby had brochures for some city walks that we could take.  It turned out to be just the right thing for Basel.  Here are some of the sites we saw…

Our first stop, Baster Münster (Basel Cathedral) turned out to be great timing as we walked in on the last part of an organ concert and the soloist was playing the classic Bach composition, “Sleepers Wake”.  The acoustics in the cathedral were amazing, almost as if it was designed to enhance the sound of a pipe organ, who would have thought…? :)

We found another gem about this church – probably the most interesting climb we’ve conquered to the top of a church bell tower.  The journey up 242 stairs involved ducking under old exposed beams and squeezing through narrow openings all the way to the top.  The best part is that we had the tower virtually to ourselves as we only came across a couple other people and only on our journey back down.  The view, of course, provided us with a great layout of Basel and a close-up look at the eye-catching tiled roof of the cathedral.

We’ve found that towns in Europe often pay tribute with museums and monuments to famous artists and performers that spent significant time in their cities.  For Basel, this artist was Jean Tinguely, who specialized in kinetic art (art that moves).  A good way to sample his art was to check out a fountain he designed - a fun tourist attraction in the center of town.  The verdict?  It intrigued us enough to check out his museum.  First, here’s a sample of the fountain, below.

The museum itself was a bit strange.  It shouldn’t have surprised us though, as Tinguely was part of the avant-garde movement (experimental and innovative), which is designed to make you think.  Not only did it make us think, we actually enjoyed it more than we thought we would.  The museum greets it patrons with a large structure composed of all sorts of spare parts (video below).  The museum was full of these objects of all shapes and sizes (with almost every spare part you could think of).  Better yet, they were all attached to a tempting red button that you could press to make them move (actually quite ingenious to keep the audience engaged). 

Tinguely was also obsessed with cars, so part of the museum contained works of art from his friends who specialized in automotive art.  While there were many intriguing exhibits, perhaps the most engaging for us was a dark room with a movie on auto-play of a car burning up from start to finish.  It took about 10 minutes to burn the interior and melt down all the paint and rubber from the tires.  We’re not sure if that’s technically “art”, but it was definitely very interesting to watch. (And actually, come to think of it, we have seen this firsthand on the Johnson farm during one of the combine derby weekends…but that’s another story). :)  Other unique exhibits included…

A tire that was running against the wall and flaking off rubber, simulating what normal tire wear is like

A leaning car (not sure how they did this)

A poster with all the individual parts of a car, taken apart

An actual car with the larger pieces pulled apart

As we exited the museum we noticed a bunch of cars parked on the lawn.  We had seen a movie schedule posted and when we saw the movie screen it finally occurred to us that this was a variation on a drive-in movie theater – instead of driving in you could actually rent a spot in one of the parked cars.  Fairly creative!

Apparently there’s a pretty sweet anatomy museum in Basel— unfortunately it’s closed on Saturdays, so we were bummed to miss out on that.

We spent the rest of the day wandering through the Basel streets, taking in the Swiss architecture.  We called it an early night because it turned out we booked an awesome suite without realizing it (we just thought all the rooms in Basel were expensive like everything else in Switzerland!).  We spent the evening sipping wine and deciding whether to admire the views of Basel from our balcony or which of the two large TVs to watch the UK’s version of Most Extreme Elimination Challenge (which is essentially a less-serious, more-hilarious version of American Gladiators).  Just as we intended - a perfect low-key day.

Sunday, however, was a time for some sweet, sweet goodness.  We took a noon train to Winterthur and went straight to our hotel to drop off our stuff and head to the show.  Interestingly enough, as we stood in the lobby we saw two gentlemen with amazing 80’s hair, tight pants, and in their 50’s.  We both looked at each other and said, “either they are going to the concert or they are in the concert”. :)  We are pretty darn sure, after seeing them later on stage, that they were the two lead singers of Night Ranger.  If only we were true fans we would have known to ask for autographs or at least say ‘hi’…

You may be asking, what kind of crowd shows up to a 70’s/80’s American rock show in the middle of Switzerland?  Well, the crowd consisted of plenty of fans from the time period (we’ll put it that way) and lots of Greatest Hits tour t-shirts.  Lots of great hairstyles, a handful of smile-inducing mullets and perhaps the most extreme was the guy with the crazy hair art sitting right behind us.  (Look beyond Ang)  Bottom line: we were definitely the youngest fans there. :)

In all seriousness, this was an awesome show.  Night Ranger and Kansas still had their original singers, while Journey and Foreigner had replacements (which for the most part held their own against the originals).  The group of the night had to be Foreigner – their “new” lead singer (“new” in quotations because he has been with the band since 2005) had an incredible rock/soul voice and really got the crowd into it.

Anyway, enough talk.  You already know the lineups and we hope you know the hits, too.  Here are a couple highlights from each band.  You’re welcome… ;)

Sister Christian – Night Ranger

  

Dust in the Wind – Kansas

Carry on my Wayward Son – Kansas

Feels Like the First Time – Foreigner

I Wanna Know What Love Is – Foreigner

Separate Ways – Journey

Faithfully – Journey