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Published: July 12th 2019
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Off to Bern for a short stay before Interlaken later this week. Again, I give up on weather reports - supposed to rain and be overcast all day... it was blazing sun for most of the day. Right.
Getting there was an adventure in itself lol. The SBB (Swiss Rail) app gave me the wrong platform info leaving Bern - thankfully I noticed well before my train was leaving. They were doing construction work and we were 22min behind schedule. Wouldn't be an issue except I had a 23min connection in Olten lol. I resigned myself to the fact I would miss my connection (because the app lied again about which platform I was catching the connecting train on) but then as I came up out of the tunnel my train was just there. Waiting. Oh thank you train gods! Not sure if they held it for connections or it was just late, but hey, I made it.
Bern is cute! Hard to live up to Lucerne, but it has a different kind of charm to it. I also love that I can speak French now (sort of) - the others areas I've been in have been distinctively German
- as the capital, Bern has both German/French presence. In both respects... I guess it's like going to Ottawa after visiting Toronto lol: cute, bilingual.
The Old Town is nice to explore - their thing is the omnipresence of bears (apparently a thing since the 1500s), their numerous distinct fountains (some are really weird lol) and a giant clock (Zytglogge). The weirdest fountain is def the "Kindlifresserbrunnen" aka the Child Eater lol. I didn't have a list of the fountains, so I'll go do more exploring for that tomorrow. The fountains are cool though because it reinforces what you find everywhere in Switzerland anyway - free clean drinkable water.
The clock does this "show" of sorts on the hour. When I walked by there were like 100 tourists standing with their phones out waiting so I'm like nah, I'll be back.
I wandered down the main street - mixture of the old beauty with modern stores lol. I made it to the edge and the bridge which gives a marvelous view down the Aare River - when the sun was out, it was that trademark turquoise. From the bridge you also get a view of the lower
town and all the old buildings and their roofs which makes for a lovely photo.
I mentioned they're all about bears here - they have a few bears down by the river (in an enclosure!). I passed by on the way to sit by the river - one of the bears was chillin' in its enclosure, fishing berries and other things out of the river to munch on. Those claws though...
I kept walking down the river to one of the spots you can sit and put your feet in. Now, there are areas where you're ALLOWED to swim in it but holy shit it would be cold. (There's also quite the current - apparently people literally just ride down the stream lol.) I could barely keep my feet in for more than a few minutes at a time. It sure was refreshing though! I think I'll find a spot along the river tomorrow (if it's sunny) and bring my book. It's so peaceful.
And that was that really. It's going to be a pretty lazy day today and tomorrow I think, which suits me just fine
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