don't know too much about ticketing i'm afraid, but i used to live in switzerland and Basle is a nice sized town (about the same as cork), it's got a nice city centre but is pretty industrial on the outskirts, like cork a lot is pharmaceutical.
It's pretty much on the french-swiss-german meeting point (the Basel airport is in france). It's easy to get to though and everything runs on time due to swiss efficiency. You can get cheapish flights via stanstead and gatwick and the airport is very close to the city, bus runs often.
check out www.baseltourismus.ch, the swiss trip should be good, country and the people are great.
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