Bern (Berne)

Conquered on 23/03/2005

Bern, the capital of Switzerland and the canton capital of Bern Canton. It's a beautiful town with lovely sights. Many good first impressions here. We landed in Zurich at about 8am, and we trained to Bern immediately. We arrived at about 9.30am in in medieval looking town. In fact, this was the first town/city we visited, so the impressions lasted.

When we first arrived by train, the first thing we did was to look for the tourist office. And man, did we have an easy time looking for it. Hardly could miss a HUGE tourist information centre sign. The service personel was very polite and gave us a good idea of how we should tour the city. We then threw our bags into lockers and started exploring the first Switzerland city. Mind you, we quite literally squashed our bags together into a locker to save money. Think we saved about 5sF. Not to mention we cheated a bit by using RenMinBi coins. Talk about budget!

From the tourist information centre, we first made our way our, and started navigating our way through the intesecting streets of Bern, confused. We first made our way to what we thought (and still think) is the City Hall equivalent of Singapore. We saw many remarkable things along the way, some things like street busking, open chess games in the streets (see photo! good stuff!).


^Something like their City Hall?^


^ Chess players playing in public, helping each other, having fun! ^

 


^ National Bank Building. The paper you see on the foreground was some artwork ^

Along the streets of Bern, we saw many many fountains like the one below. This one is the most famous of them all, depicting the legend of an Orc eating young children, a folklore here. Cathedrals also litter this little city, beautifully carved out arches, and gates, and doors. You will be seeing alot of this sort of stuff in my pictures. Yep!


^ One of the fountains along the streets, special to this city ^


^ Towering cathedrals! ^


^ Group photo, taken by a nice old man ^


^ See the intricate designs on the arch ^

When we left the cathedral, we walked towards the golden archs of Mcdonalds in curiousity, wondering the prices. Before that, we came across this beautiful clock tower. About 3 minutes before the hour strikes, the figurines on the tower will start to move about, depicting a story. It is a beautiful piece of art. Here, I was approached by about 3 swiss young boys, asking me to help them in a project they were supposed to do. I *tried* to help as much as possible, minding the language barrier and using whatever French/German I knew. We almost ended up playing a mime.


^ Famous clocktower in Bern, see the figures move for 3 mins before the hour strikes! ^

After I tried to be helpful, we strolled northwards towards the famed Bear Pits of Bern. It was supposed to be the landmark of Bern, something that represents Bern in this Conferderation. However, the lazy bears were snoozing when we go there, and all I got was this shot of their asses. After sometime, we made our way to the tourist information and enquired about a good place for lunch. 'Tis where we first discovered about Migros! We had a nice lunch of bananas, chocolates and half a spring chicken each person... And off to Geneva!


^ Lazy bears in the Bear Pits of Bern. They are the city's mascot, representation. ^


^ Nice architectural designs here ^


^ A lovely neighbourhood to stay in... -dreams- ^


^ How the train looks. Off we go in a train, to Geneva! ^

 

NEXT! GENEVA! --> Geneva <--

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