Bank of International Settlements

On Friday I went to Basel for a field trip at the Bank of International Settlements, which we found out is one of the most important banks in the world because it's the bank the serves all the central banks. It's a very high security bank and usually it doesn't take visitors, but my professor had connections so we got special permission to visit it. We had to dress up and I felt pretty official in my business casual taking the train to Switzerland for the day! I wish I could live in Freiburg and work in Basel, that would be awesome.

Anyway, security there was INTENSE. When we walked in, we had to give them our passports and in turn, they handed us an ID badge with our name and country on it. We held these badges up to a sensor which opened a door for us. Then we had to go into a Star Trek like portal that completely shut us in, scanned our bodies for 10 seconds, and let us out the other side. It was slightly terrifying not knowing if the doors on the other side were going to open or not!

After everyone was through security, we were led straight up to the conference room which was OFFICIAL! It was a huge round table with executive chairs, microphones at every seat, and 2 different kinds of water for every person. I was so excited that I was sitting in the same place where Ben Bernanke sits and discusses economic issues with other banking leaders of the world.

That wore off after about 5 minutes. The talk we had was way way over my head and led by kind of snotty Swiss bankers who used a lot of jargon and were a little too excited by finance. After I discovered where the digital clock was on the wall, it was all downhill, because I could see it flipping numbers every minute of the corner of my eye, and we were stuck in that room for 2.5 hours.

When the talk was over, the leader of our tour group excitedly told us that he got special permission to show us another part of the bank, in a separate building across the street. We all had to go through security again and when we were finally in, we found out that we could only look at the lobby and go nowhere else. The lobby was empty and there was nothing to see! Everyone was pretty disappointed, and going back through security to get out took forever.

It was rainy and cold, but I stuck around afterward for a tour of Basel, and then got lunch at my favorite little cafe with my friend Todd. I love being able to say I have a favorite little cafe in Basel. It was kind of a weird field trip overall, but hey, I'll take a trip to Basel any day!