It was only a matter of time before the concept of the now regular Bern FIRE-Meetup would be exported to another major swiss city that’s under-loved by the FI(RE) community : Basel.
But it’s even better than that!
Just last month I was in talks with Victor Lora, the founder of France’s largest FIRE community to organize joint Swiss-French-Intl. FIRE-Meetups in Basel in complement of the very rares ones organized in Strasbourg (and none in Mulhouse afaik)
The idea would be make the Basel Meetup a “Dreyeckland Thing” with ,every once in a while, the potential of having the Meetup jump over to Mulhouse, Freiburg or even Strasbourg (once in a blue moon) in order to foster exchange and friendship among the FIRE communites of Switzerland, France and Gerrmany.
Now, as I’m not as familiar with Basel as I am with Bern, before I set up a doodle I would first like to hear some of your suggestions and recommendations for places in Basel similar to the Altes Tramdepot, ideally equipped with large round tables like the ones we are used to in Bern, which encourage conviviality.
The provisory date for the first Basel FIRE-Meetup would be either early or late-April (to avoid colliding with Easter), and most likely on a weekend, in order to accomodate for people coming from all across the Dreyeckland.
I don’t know the Altes Tramdepot but may I suggest the Unternehmen Mitte (https://mitte.ch/) for consideration. It is supposed to be a more “alternative” place located in the city center of Basel, it has excellent own roasted coffee and good local beer. The best part is that the building was the one of a bank in the past and still has a safe in the basement
Thanks for your initiative and I am looking forward to such a FIRE meetup in Basel.
I also second @mabi recommendation of Unternehmen Mitte as the central spot to meet in Basel. Great coffee!
As an alternative, Markthalle is also good (https://www.altemarkthalle.ch/) and a bit closer to the station. More of a pop-up food place with lots of tables around.
Okay these are the location candidates so far: Safran Zunft , Krafft Basel ,SchĂĽtzenhaus, GifthĂĽttli, Volkshaus Basel, Walliser Kanne, Tapas del Mar Spalenburg, Unternehmen Mitte, Argentinischer Grill Lounge, Miake Izakaya , Tibits
What I’ve heard about Unternehmen Mitte though is that it can get hectic and quite loud and that they apparently only have small round tables or long tables where the people at both ends can’t hear each other.
For reference this is the kind of tables we usually book for the Bern Meetup, it’s quite practical to communicate and not exclude anyone
You’re right on that point it is usually quite busy and hence loud and they don’t have big round tables. So what people usually do is that they put 2-3 smaller tables next to each other. In these terms the Markthalle is better as they also have benches on two sides with longer tables.
Anyhow for location ideas, i do also find Markthalle and Mitte suitable, but I will throw in one more location, namely Klara, which I’d find most suitable (there’s a medium-sized room in the back (i.e. furthest from the entrance) with decent tables, this room is usually quiet).
They have an excellent virtual tour on their website - KLARA
The downside is that it’s in Kleinbasel and one will need to take a tram from the Bahnhof to get there.
Klara is also good. if possible, lets just avoid Safran Zunft, Walliser Kanne, Schuetzenhaus as these are all expensive restaurants (not good from Mustachian perspective )
Okay, so Martkthalle didn’t really make it easy for me, no possibility to put 2 round tables together…
…but KLARA on the other hand was very obliging and accomodating they agreed to everything. Early April wasn’t possible, but late April was OK. so I booked 2 round tables for
May I suggest maybe adding some additional dates/times in the doodle? So that the date/time with most participants win. For example maybe one around lunch time/afternoon on the week-end and another one during the week like after work. Of course if that makes sense for you.
As mentioned in the first post, it has to be on a weekend, in order to accomodate for people coming from France and Germany. I’m also working full-time in Bern during the week.
I asked KLARA if I could reserve multiple time slots for the saturday or the sunday, unfortunately it wasn’t possible, they also couldn’t guarantee that they would still be able to offer me the two round tables we need if I called back next week.
But usually for the Bern Meetup, we settled for the 18:00 time slot which seems to work for a majority of people.
By the way you guys feel free to invite your FI friends, I made sure we get the flexibility to add an extra table if need be.
By the way, a pair of signs (which will look very familiar to the regulars of the Bern Meetup ) will indicate the tables booked for our Meetup, we will be in the back of Klara, in the more quiet area.