So we woke up around 9 (which is kinda late for us :( ), just in time to catch the tail end of the free breakfast, then headed out into the old part of the city. We are staying right behind the parliment building so we tried to see that first. As we were walking around it, we noticed someone had graffitied a penis onto the parliment, so we figured the central government must not get respect. When we got to the front, we saw it was closed for renovations... so we walked across the street and found a farmer's market and an old city gate. So we started walking down marketstrasse, which had a colored statue with lots of gold every 20 feet, and everywhere there were bears (the flag of bern has a bear on it as well). Along the way, we found Einstein house, a place where he lived when he wrote his theory of realitivity, and is now a museum.
We then walked to the end of the street to find the BEAR PITS!!! We then looked in to see 1 bear between 2 pits, and his name just happned to be Pedro, and he was sleeping when we arrived. So we then started walkign towards the big gothic cathedral that is famous in bern. It proved to be very massive, with some great stained glas windows. One had a skeleton in each panel, doing crazy things like taking off the popes hat, much to the pope's suprise. So then we walked down to the end of the street, and turned to walk down the 3rd main street in old bern (there are three total). Apparently, this is the bad part of old town, cuz it was full of porn stores and lots of bars and seedy looking people. So we hurried through, and ent back to the marketstrasse to look for a place for lunch. We happened upon a mcdonalds, and checked the prices, 11 franks for a big mac (which is around $11). So we instead got sandwiches in a grocery store, then went to starbucks to chill. We tehn realiyed a venti (large) drink was 8.50 franks! so we ate and chilled there coffeeless. We then hit up the grocery store to pick up some food for tomorrow and headed back to do laundry, which took forever, thanks to the machines being in some eastern european language that not even the employees could read... So tomorrow we are leaving bern for feiberg in germany! Until then.
3 comments:
you know, my love, I have discovered the greatest tool on the internet! I randomly looked up bern on Google Maps and much to my elated surprise, I can see all of the buildings (at least from an aerial view) you're talking about. I was so excited to see that central bern is shaped like a sideways "u" because of the river. And I found the parliament building and einstein's museum (that looked like a long walk there).
I guess us Americans must learn the hard lesson that our cheap luxuries here are way too expensive for us to even afford in other countries! I'm glad you stayed away from that $8.50 latte. Save your money for something more worth it.
Thank you for posting regularly. I know (thanks to the internet) that Bern is 6 hours ahead of our time here. That way, it's nice to have a post to read at about 2:30-3pm while you are probably getting ready for bed. :) I love you!
It's always good to see a blog from you. Sounds like you are continuing to find challenges on your adventures. Guess you've discovered "American" restaurants are rather pricey. I remeber that being the case 30 years ago! Guess you'll have to stick to the local fare. Sounds like Cassie has found a neat site to follow your adventures. I haven't had a chance to check it out, but hopefully will get to soon. How do you like Bern? It was hard to tell from your discription. The churches in Europe are really ornate and beautiful. So what exactly is the purpose of the bear pits? Hope you found some nicer sections of town than the porn district! Are the five of you touring together or do you split up during the day? What has been your favorite part of your trip so far? I look forward to hearing about Feiberg. Thanks for keeping up with the blog!!! Hello to Mark. Love you, Mom
At this point, Mark, Alex and I are on a side tour through benr and freiberg while the other two went straight to munich. So we´ll be meeting up with them again tomorrow. Bern was an interesting medieval town, but I couldnt figure out the reason for the bear pits, except that there are bears everywhere (its their symbol and on their flag)
Post a Comment