Cruising in the Capital

  Bern, Switzerland
Thursday, July 12, 2007

This morning we drove to Thun and picked up the motorbikes for Mike, Marla and Nathan, nice new BMWs for those twisty alpine roads.  From there, they carried on with the bikes and we carried on in cars to Bern, the capital of Switzerland and (as any resident will be proud to tell you) a UNESCO World Heritage Site for it's medieval-era stone city and cobbled streets.  Although beautiful, it was a bit dodgy to drive through, with tiny narrow streets, heaps of pedestrians wandering all over the place, undecipherable road signs in German, and large red street cars and buses bearing down on us from every direction.  We eventually managed to park, both us and the car intact, and set off to explore the city.

Town Clock

The seven of us had a picnic lunch of fresh baked bread, local cheese and kuchen for dessert, then we said our farewells to Kat and Jeff and headed on into the city centre, most of which was dominated by a massive 11th century clock tower, and an even more massive and ornate cathedral.  It turns out that you can buy tickets to climb the cathedral steeple, so we headed up the tiny winding staircase and (eventually) found ourselves at a balcony waaaay above the ground, looking out at the red tiled roofs of the city, punctuated by the occasional church steeple.  It was enough to give you serious vertigo looking down at the plaza below and the tiny people walking around down there, but just beautiful having a birds eye view of the ancient city.  

Rained in Lunch

We wandered the covered walkways of the streets lined with eclectic shops selling everything from Thai food to Rolex watches, stumbled across Einstein's old apartment from when he was worked as a lowly patent clerk in the Bern office, and where he lived when he developed the famous theory of relativity. 

Town View

We also discovered the (apparently) famous bears of Bern, two huge brown bears in a large pit enclosure just outside the main town centre.  The keepers there sold bags of chopped fruit which you could throw down to them, and they were obviously used to the routine because they would come over and sit on the ground below you, huge paws clasped together like Oliver Twist asking for some more.  We had a great time and took lots of photos, it was cool being so close up to these massive animals.  All in all, Bern was a very cool city, and we enjoyed the short time we had there.

Begging Bear

All our best from Switzerland

Dan and Gabrielle