Bern, Switzerland

Bern is a much much nicer city than Zurich. It’s quaint and feels small, which it’s not if you consider the regions we came in through. This time we changed things up a bit, and followed the suggested walking path on the map we got at the hotel.


It took us past innumerable fountains, all marked as points of interest, but pretty much all the same. Then we crossed over the river, on a bridge that is at least 25 metres above the fast flowing, blue-green-cloud-like river Aarn, watching the rafters as we went. Just across the river, we came across the Barenpark – they have a huge area surrounded by fences and such on the bank of the river, containing 4 bears, one adult male by himself and 2 babies with their mum. All completely free, and great fun to watch them – they were very active, bouncing around, eating things, swimming, all the usual things animals do, but you don’t often see them do in captivity.

Just below Barenpark were some steps down to the river, so we followed the suit of some locals, removed shoes and stuck our feet into the absolutely freezing water, and tried to avoid being pulled downstream by the current.


Not content with just my feet, I decided to act like a seal and soak my head as well. The water turned out to be brilliantly clear and not cloudy at all, like it had looked from up on the bridge. Still a gorgeous colour, though. Looked very deep, seemed to go on forever.




We only had the afternoon in Bern, as we had previously changed our plans for trip to Geneva, but on coming across one of those giant chess boards, we figured what the hell, and had a game of chess, which Rhiannon decided to win. Continuing on from the chess game, we took a detour around some building works, and found a viewing point behind the parliament building, which stares out over the mountains, covered in snow. Yes, it’s still summer. Apparently they are always covered in snow.

We finished up the walking tour (more fountains) and after hunting in vain for a cheap restaurant, ended up paying 40CHF for a meal, before heading back to our hotel on the edge of the city. The tram was much busier than normal, and when we got to the end of the line (our stop) we realised there was a circus across the road, possibly for that night only because by the time we got up this morning, it had all been packed up and disappeared. Thus ended our trip in Bern, with a few train connections down to Zweisimmen so we could catch another Goldenpass to Montreaux.