Return to Bernese Oberland, Part 3: Bern

After our canyoning adventure, Andrew and I decided to make the most of his Swiss Rail Pass and boarded a train to Bern, the country’s capital. I’ve now been living Switzerland for about 21 months and it took me almost that long to get there (not counting the evening I spend in the train station following a concert in Zurich). I’m really glad we went! It was a nice sized city and very active (though perhaps some of that was the fact it was the day after a national holiday so many had probably taken off work). We walked pretty much the whole thing and covered Rick Steves’ suggested city tour. The symbol of Bern is the bear (the name has to be some sort of Germanic remnant meaning the same) so there are bears all over the place.




Bern has several of these medieval fountains around town that are one of the city’s trademarks


Also fairly well-known: this clock, on which at the turn of every hour the characters do pretty much nothing…


The final judgement entryway of the otherwise sparse cathedral




Beautiful stepped hillside by the river






Walking the line between depressing and hilarious (hilariously depressing?), Bern keeps a bear pit by its tourism office. You can buy food to throw down to them and they are so lazy they often don’t bother unless they can catch it without moving.


Me and Bern


bookstore gnome


Swiss parliament


The fountain of an ogre. Yes, those are children he is eating.


scariest mannequin ever


Controversial fountain that is, at the least, interesting


And finally, yes, this was in a store in Bern. Obama ’08! Even Switzerland’s getting into the act!

After a busy afternoon and a bit of window shopping, we hopped on a train back to Geneva in time for dinner and some rest before Andrew’s insanely early 6:00am flight. He managed to pack a lot into the trip and I’m glad I was able to join for at least some of it. Now I just have to find a way to get out to Wyoming to visit him…