Novotel Bern Expo

... to catch the bus to Bonigen which was a quaint small town on Lake Brienz. The girl at the hostel had said that it was a 20 minute walk but in true Swiss style, we think that it was probably 40 minutes for any non-Swiss person. Bonigen was so quiet, hardly anybody was about but it was a good opportunity to see different styles of the ...

... great, relaxing day. It was probably the first time I have had guilt free relaxation in a long time. For once, there was nothing else I supposed to be doing, or could have been doing, so nothing was rushed because we had no laptops or papers we had to return to. That evening we went to a really good dinner in the Korn Haus. It was a neat atmosphere and really good food for our price range. I had delicious pesto gnocchi. The night before, a few of my friends ...

I got into Bern aroound lunch. It was too early to check into my hostel so I walked around town, toting my pack on my back. It was pretty hot, so it wasn't the most comfortable way to see the town. The town itself is very cool. It has an aqua-blue-green river running through the middle and really cute hosues all over the place. There is a pit which normally contains bears, but ...

... a bustling shopping area so I decided to warm up a bit and check out the shops. There were still some good post-Christmas deals to be had but I didn't buy anything. I headed back to the nearest bus stop instead and made my way back to the train station where I was happy to get on a train back to Basel and warm up! I will definitely come back to Bern when it is a bit warmer so I am more inclined to spend some time wandering.

... straight to bed as we were absolutely buggered! Thismorning i had a decent sleep in and then headed into Bern to do some last minute shopping, + to buy some thankyou presents. I also had a parcel of stuff to send home so i organised that and just pottered around, packing up my stuff, finalising plans etc. At about 6pm we jumped in the car and drove to Fribourg to Desirees godmothers house, where we had dinner with her family - of the most amazing dish of baked asparagus wrapped ...

... and high) and most famous peaks, The Matterhorn. It took us almost 2 hours to reach the chalet-style town, and then another hour to to reach the summit of Gornergrat, which gives you spectacular views over all the mountains in the area. In fact, Switzerlands 10 highest mountains are all visible from this particular area, and are all at over 4000m high. We got lucky with the weather, with blue skies and only a small ammount of cloud, as we were assending up to Gornergrat ...

... t know how I did it in the past, its totally not enough time. I guess this is a good time to complain about the small amount of vacation that we get in the US. When I started my job I got 2 weeks a year and eventually I worked up to almost 3 weeks (never felt like it). Two weeks of vacation is nothing, it takes two weeks to actually relax and feel like you are on vacation, but if you do that, you totally blew your vacation for ...

... boring english the most difficult thing for me to handle when dealing with all these English people is their long-windedness these people seem to have spent their entire lifetime discussing every little detail of their day and everything behind the scenesand then twice as long (always over beer or wine) planning every minute detail of the next day and next ten years. sausage and french fries for only $25! now the wierdness of switzerland first the ...

I was so excited heading to switzerland, how could I not be, Part of the reason I wanted to be there at the end of spring was to get in some late snowboarding. But i wanted to check out the capital before heading deep into the alps. I admit I got a little bored in bern, probably b/c I chose the wrong hostel that had no backpackers, only little kids, but thats what ya get when you choose some HI hostels. But it was ...

... is so bad (think tubas and those Ricola guys with long horns), then she pumps her arms up and down and says "Sveetzerland" in an exaggerated accent. We have been going through deja vu every time we turn on the radio. In our hotel in Zermatt we flipped it on and "Rhinestone Cowboy" was playing. Here's hoping the south of France is a bit more remote, and a bit warmer. It has been rainy and foggy too much in the past week; it was an average of 8 Celsius the whole time we were in the mountains.