Bern

9th & 10th July 2010

After we got to Bern, it was again straight to the hostel to check in and dump the bags. We gathered plenty of reading material from the reception and made a decision as to what to for the rest of the afternoon. Bern is known as the city of the Bears, but in our Lonely Planet guide it stronglyadvises tourists not to go to the Bear Pit to look at the cities 'pets' as it's cruel and inhumane. All the material we had been given at the hostel though said it was brilliant and they had some new additions to the 'enclosure'.

With hesitation we walked through the beautiful Old Town cobbled streets to the large bridge and green river until we reached the Bear Spot. As the Lonely Planet is a little out dated now, they are sorely wrong. The bears have the most massive and huge enclosure, which even includes a little swimming pool with river water in it. The old bear pits are there too, and I would agree having two bears in that tiny space would've been horrible to see. But they were so happy in this massive area. There was an adult male and an adult female. Only about 9 months ago, as a present for opening the new enclosure, the Russian President presented the city of Bern with twin bear cubs too. The babies were in the mothers side of the enclosure and they were so completely gorgeous. Even though they are now about 12 months old they were tiny compared to the massive adult bears. And instead of slowly ambling everywhere like the old ones, these little guys went bounding all over the place. We stayed and took heaps of photos of the bears before crossing back up over the river.

We were tempted to follow the locals and go for a swim in the river. It is quite a large, fast flowing river and shaped like a big U. All the locals jump in up at the top of the U, with their waterproof bags and float (Quite quickly around to the other side, where it's only a short walk back to the start again. Looked like great fun, but I didn't trust Dan's swimming ability, it was a bloody fast moving river!! Plus we didn't have swimming shoes, and nearly everyone was wearing them, must be a good reason for it!

We headed up to the Swiss Parliament building, and just had a look out the front. There is a massive square, with some nice water shoots spurting straight out of the ground. Instead of it being a nice thing to look at, families have decided that it's a great day out for the whole family. They're all camped around the edge of the water feature, with picnic rugs and packed lunches, while the kids are in their undies running through the water. There was one boy, maybe about 7 or 8, who continually pulled his Speedo's up and up. He ended up with the biggest wedgies, but insisted that his bathers weren't high enough. I was trying to take a photo of him, but doing that is the sort of thing that earns you a few years in jail.

We found a good-sized supermarket and spent the better part of 45 minutes walking around it trying to decide what to cook for dinner. I ended up settling on a chicken breast fillet and some packet rice, while dan went for meat on a stick with a salad. Yummy, and only a quarter of the price a restaurant in Switzerland would charge. With 1 Swiss Franc = $1 Aus, we refused to eat out much. As an example a small Big Mac meal was 13 Francs. No way. Main meals in an average restaurant were around the 20-franc mark. Add drinks and it becomes an expensive affair. Our supermarket shop, which was for dinner and breakfast and lunch the following day cost us 21 Francs. Score. That also included a decent sized hoard of chocolate - its so darn cheap here!!!

The rest of our evening was spent cooking and hanging out in the lovely common room. It was pretty boring, but nice and relaxing. It got a bit rowdy later on - the hostel is on top of a bar, and the only way of avoiding turning the room into a sauna means opening the windows. It was tough to get to sleep, but the ear plugs helped!!

Next morning we were up at a decent time, organised and breakfasted and headed off for the day. Our first stop was the History Museum, which is home to the Einstein Museum. It was a really fascinating museum. It showed Albert's life, from and all the significant things that happened during his lifetime. They also tried to demonstrate his Theory of Relativity, in a basic, pictorial fashion, but I still don't get it! Things I didn't know about Albert Einstein: He was offered the position of President of Israel, He had an affair with his cousin and there was a great letter transaction between him and a plumber who both wished to swap professions! I also loved the 'mirrored staircase', which lead you up to the museum - really really disorientating.

It was about 1pm by the time we got out of the museum, and we had a laugh at the dad's who had stripped off the kids and thrown them in the fountain for a swim out the front of the museum. The Swiss will swim anywhere! We decided that we couldn't be money tight all trip and decided to treat ourselves to a proper lunch. We found a nice Swiss restaurant and ordered up a traditional dish: Rösti. In the English translation, it becomes "Hash Brown". Its basically grated potato, fried, then baked in the oven with bacon, mushrooms and swiss cheese. Absolutely awesome. We also had a pizza too, but that was ordinary.

We spent the afternoon just wandering around the beautiful Old City of Bern. The buildings and the roads are just magnificent, easily the best Swiss town we've visited this far. We headed back to Parliament house to see if we could get on a guided tour of the palace type building it's housed in. We were about 5 minutes too late as the last English spots for the afternoon had just been filled. b*****. That was followed with more wandering and looking around. We did have to stop and check out the big clock and his 'on the hour' show. It was also disappointing - a little bit more modern than Lausanne's though.

We hit up the supermarket again for dinner on our walk back to the hotel, and arrived back to the hotel just as the black clouds rolled in for the evenings thunderstorm. We realised just after we got to the hostel that it was the final of the World Cup and we needed a few beers. The closest place was at the train station, about 10 minutes walk away. We raced through the lightning and thunder and rain, eventually making it to the train station. Just as we reached the station though, Dan spotted a sign for a bar showing the night's match: "Germany v Uruguay". Hang on a sec, the finals between Holland and Spain. What the? Oh the 3rd place play off. That's tonight, the final is TOMORROW. Oops. Well we're at the beer shop now (Which is coincidentally "Beers of the world" complete with Tooheys, VB, Coopers and XXXX) lets get some home brand beer and go back to the hostel. Which we did, in the rain. Stupid mistake. Oh well. Dinner and our beers was lovely, and we were in bed as soon as the German's had won the match.

The next morning we were up and organised by about 11, and we were on a train to the tiny town of Lauterbrunnen, near Interlaken, before lunch!