Bern

We woke up bright and early on Friday morning and headed over to the train station. Our ride to Bern was easy sailing (about 1.5 hours), and once there we stashed our backpacks in lockers in the train station and headed out into the city. Some classmates of ours had been there the weekend prior, and told us you could see the city in a few hours. We had no plans other than to walk around and have lunch before heading to Interlaken that afternoon. I was talking to my mom the night before, and she told me Bern means “bear” in German (I wonder if this has any relationship to the Bernstein Bears books) and that there are two bears there who are the mascots for the city. We walked around for awhile and then focused on finding the bears. There were lots of tour groups around Bern, so we headed in the general direction of the groups and ended up at the bear pits. They literally are just two concrete pits, dug into the ground, where the bears are supposed to live. There was lots of construction going on, and no bears in sight, and we learned that the pits are being redone and the bears won’t be back in them until October. We saw a visitor building advertising the “Bern show” so we thought—well, we can’t see the bears in their pits so let’s go see them in the show! After being laughed at by the info desk attendant, we learned the Bern show is a movie about the history of the city, and has nothing to do with the bears.

Bern is a relatively small town, surrounded on three sides by a river that winds its way around the city. It is more picturesque and Swiss looking than cosmopolitan Geneva, and I really liked it. But my classmates were right—after five hours there, I was ready to leave.

Picture: Bern