Bern

The kids and I spent the weekend exploring Bern while Travis attended and spoke at an MRI conference.  The inter-city train to Bern travels there in less than 1 hour, making it a quick trip to the Bernese Oberland region of Switzerland.  Bern is the Bundesstadt (the capital) of the country where the Federal Council and Parliamentary offices are located.  The official language in Bern is German, but a slightly different dialect than is spoken in Zürich.... I must be learning some German because I could actually tell it was different, even though I still couldn't understand what they were saying.  

Saturday we walked to the center city (medieval and a UNESCO world heritage site) and visited the cathedral called the Münster.  It was an amazing, ornate church with intricate details on the stain-glass windows and ceilings.  We decided to climb up the clock tower, which turned out to be a tight spiral staircase going up 254 steps to the main platform and then 90 more steps to the top viewing area.  The tower itself is 100m (384 ft) high!  It was a spectacular view to look down on the city buildings, the Aare river, and the mountains in the distance.  From multiple places in the city, you can see some of the tallest mountains in Switzerland, Jungfrau, Mönch, and Eiger, which are 3900-4100 m (over 13,000 ft).  We were all quite winded by the time we reached the top platform, not to mention slightly dizzy from the height.  I'm not often bothered by heights, but the widow slits in the walls - not really big enough to slip through, but still at least 6 inches wide, were making me very nervous.  Elisabet claimed she was never going to climb it again.  

While looking for lunch, we stopped to watch the clock strike 12 at the Zytglogge, a famous clock tower with moving puppets and a carousel.  Then we found a fountain in the city square with a cycling water display.  This proved to be way too tempting for all children who ventured by on the 60 degree sunny afternoon, and soon there were hoards of them, stripped to their underwear, shrieking and running through the spraying jets of water.  

Sunday morning we visited the Einstein museum and learned how he formulated his theory of relativity while working in Bern at the patent office.  Soon afterward he moved to Zürich to become a professor at the University (ETH) and then on to Prague, Zürich again, Berlin, and finally to the US.  The museum also included a sobering exhibit of WWII and the concentration camps with footage from Stalingrad, the invasion of the Pacific, and Normandy, and of prisoners in the camps and the mass graves in Poland and Germany.  They had these movies playing behind a barrier so you could choose not to view them- they were definitely the most graphic images I have seen of the fighting and the concentration camps.

After the museum we hiked down to the river level- much of the city is built on some very steep hills.  We watched a group of people come over the falls in a flat bottom boat.  We couldn't decide if they were an orienteering group or military.  For those of you interested in cars, we saw a Weissman Roadster, a hand crafted car with a BMW engine (and according to Aaron there are only a few thousand out on the roads).  It was unique looking enough that many people were veering out of their way to take a closer look.  

Since it was an even warmer day than the previous one, the kids begged to return to the square and spent another hour or so getting soaked in the fountains.  This time even a few adults tried it out (clothed of course).