Jacqui.ch: Bern

Last Saturday I went to Bern with Adrienn, Shane and Shiraz. Bern is the capital of Switzerland, which I didn't know until I came over here. If you had asked me before I probably would have answered Geneva or Zurich (did YOU know that Bern was the capital?). The weather was rainy, so we bundled up with our sweaters and umbrellas and got on the train. Bern is only an hour away, so we just went for the afternoon (hooray for sleeping in!).

The first thing we say was the Einstein Museum. It was a bit hard to find due to stupid street numbering, but we eventually made it to this tiny museum located in Einstein's old apartment. He was living in Bern, working at the patent office, while doing work that eventually won him the Nobel Prize. It was really interesting reading about Einstein's life, it was cool to find out that he was a student and professor at the ETH in Zurich where I work.

Next we checked out Bern's astrological clock, that was reminiscent of the one we saw in Prague (but not as cool). Just like in Prague, every hour there is a little show as the clock strikes the hour (once again, not as cool as the one in Prague, but we weren't expecting it to be). It was weird because the clock show actually starts at 4 minutes to the hour with a rooster crowing, then you wait and there is a jester ringing a bell, then you wait, etc. I think it would have been a lot better is everything happened at once. Hmm, I should go into the business of clock design... (speaking of which, that reminds me of something we were discussing on the way home on the train, about how the world should evolve to a metric time system. It just makes sense, everything else is metric! Hmm, enough geekyness and back to the trip description...). Something that is cool about Bern is that many of the main sidewalks are covered by arcades, which is like walking in an outdoor hallway. Perfect for a rainy day.

Adrienn and Shane waiting for the clock show.

Contender for the coolest fountain in Switzerland: an ogre eating babies, haha, why is that on a fountain? Shane and Adrienn do a reenactment.

The city of Bern is named after the German word for bear (bÃ¤r), which was the first animal hunted in the area by some dude during the construction of the city (nice story eh?). Anyways, to celebrate this, Bern's canton flag has a bear on it, and they also have bear pits in the city. Yup, bear pits..it's as if you were at the zoo and were at a below-ground-level bear enclosure, cept instead you are just walking in the city. Unfortunatelyy, due to the bad weather we didn't see any bears (they must have been hiding inside), but at least we tried. I haven't decided yet whether I approve of having bears in a pit in a city (it is a nice pit, and apparently they are very well cared for).

Shane and I beside the bear-less bear pit

Next we headed over to the parliament building. Since it was late afternoon by then, we had missed all the tours (man, what's the deal with us and missing parliament tours? See Budapest). The coolest part about the parliament building was a wicked fountain they had out front (cooler than the ogrer fountain, but not as humorous). It had 26 jets of water, one for each of the Swiss Cantons, and they were constantly changing and doing different patterns. The fountain was basically luring you to try and run through without getting randomly sprayed when one of the jets went off. They boys ran through the fountain (Shiraz got wet, haha), but were shown up by some crazy Italian girls that were playing Russian roulette by standing on the jets and seeing who got soaked first (keep in mind it was a chilly rainy day). Eventually they were just running around in the water, it was very entertaining.