The Many Splendors of Bern

I was supposed to go to Delemont this weekend and ride my bike. Laura and I were planning to bike to the quaint medieval village of St. Ursanne and picnic by the river in our bike clothes. We were going to have a dip in the chilly water. Unfortunately it didn't happen that way. It happened this way:

I was thawing 11 kg of ground beef, preparing to immerse myself in Raw Mince for Thursday Night Meatloaf when my phone rang. It was Laura calling to tell me not to come to Delemont because she was going to Rome instead. There was a delivery of very important insects to be picked up on Sunday. So she decided to make the most of the task and leave two days early, even though it meant breaking our plans only three hours before I was planning to leave Adelboden. But, my bag was already packed so I got on the bus anyway.

And now the story of my cranky, self-pitying, miserable day in the Splendid City of Bern.

I arrived in Bern around 10:30. The cheaper hostels' reception was already closed, so I set out for the Youth Hostel International. I was exhausted, it was dark and I only had a very vague idea of where I was going. Rick Steves' maps are sometimes inadequate. Luckily, the swiss post large maps of tourist areas. I took a very scenic route but managed to find the Hostel around 11:30. When I told the man at the desk that "Yes, I am looking for a bed", and "No, I do not have reservations" he frowned. After grumbling over a spread sheet for several minutes he found me The Last Bed. I slept miserably.

The next morning I spent a few minutes chatting with my roommates. They were three girls from Norway on a 22 day rail-pass trip through Europe. They were heading to Interlaken that morning so I lent them the Rick Steves and they seemed fairly impressed. How do people get around without such a handy guide? As I was leaving, I gave them a Resses and they said "Wait, do You want some chocolate too? We went to Belgium and got a bit carried away" So I was thinking they had a few chocolate bars or something. No, they gave me a whole kilo of chocolates, wrapped up in a gold box with a burgundy ribbon.

In hind-sight, I wish I had left the chocolate for the same reason they passed it off to me. When you're hauling around a backpack all day, that extra kilo sucks. Also, when I packed the chocolate yesterday I tipped the box on its end in my pack--a very bad idea--and now they're all gooey and squished. Or at least one or two chocolates that once had carmel in them no longer do.

Then I headed to the Aare River. The old city of Bern was bordered on three sides by a great bend in the river. This way they only had to build one city wall. Rick told me that when in Bern one must go swimming in the Aare. It was a warm day, so I headed down to the big riverside park that has lockers. I was a bit worried because I didn't actually have a swimming suit, I had planned to just swim in my unds. I don't know what Swiss laws regarding public decency are, but the very first thing I saw at the park was the bare backside of an old man. So I wasn't too concerned about my unds anymore. I threw my bag in a locker, put on my gecko shoes and headed upstream.

This is the park by the river where you can see a naked person about every 5 minutes if you want to.

The river is fed by snowmelt from the mountains and runs very swiftly. The locals walk up river for a ways, find a set of stairs and jump in. Then, they float down the river for a ways until they see another set of stairs. The river is swift so you have to swim quickly and grab onto one of the hand railings to keep from being swept away.

Look carefully, you can see people climbing out.

On Friday, when I was standing up to my knees in the River Aare in my unds the water was about 17 C. Getting in was awfully difficult, but I was helped in my the knowledge that as soon as I got in I wouldn't look ridiculous anymore. Also, the swift current drug me right off the slippery rocks. Getting out was harder. Bobbing along in the river was fun, but I suspect the fear factor has something to do with its appeal. First, you could get hypothermia and die if you miss the last red pole exit. Second, there is a dam downstream that would chop you into a billion pieces if you miss the last pole. And Finally, when you're getting out the current is dragging you along at quite a clip and the water gets shallower and there are huge boulders along the bottom that you could break your leg off on. Phew. I did it three times and decided that was enough. Then, I layed in the sun like a lizard to dry off and warm up.

After I got dressed I moved down the river a ways and laid on the bank and pretended to be some sort of swiss Huck Finn for nearly two hours. (Then I made a bed reservation at the hostel in Luzern and moved on to the Bern Cathedral).

Here's a lovely video of the river.

This is the cathedral viewed from my HuckFinn spot on the river.

The Bern cathedral is a huge pointy gothic church that is on every Bern postcard ever.
Outside the cathedral is a large park. I wandered around the Platform (as it's called) for a few minutes, peering over the cliff down at the river and watching people play bocce ball on what used to be a cemetery, and definitely still contains bones. A few girls in neon pink sashes approached me and asked if I wanted to play tug of war. So I did, with about 9 other strangers. We beat the pink-ladies. Their english was about as good as my german but I understand that they were celebrating the end of their exams with some sort of hazing ritual.

I thought this was a monument for some dead person, since it was on the church Platform.

But when I got closer I realized it was an old weather station thing.

The great doors outside the Cathedral are decorated with a scene from the Last Judgement. Michael the Archangel with his sword is eviscerating a green demon right in the middle and on the right hand side are people suffering the torments of hell and on the left are people entering the gates to Heaven. It was designed and installed in the 15th century (though recently the original pieces were removed to the Bern Museum and plaster casts stand up there now). Apparently during the Reformation most of the churches statues were destroyed and rest somewhere under the Platform. Thankfully the main door scene survived Reformation because everyone loves to see people burn in the fires of hell.

I paid the kids admission price to climb the tower. The stairs were windy and old, but it was neat to see the carvings and statues on the tower up close. Here are some of the things I saw.
At the top I met an old lady who asked me if I wanted to know anything about the cathedral. I said "Tell me anything because I don't know anything yet" She laughed and began telling me everything she could think of. She told me about the 54 Berns of the world, one of which is in Idaho and she's been there. She's also been to the one in Indiana and hopes to go to New Bern South Carolina for it's 200 year anniversary in 2010. She asked me if I was learning German and I said I was trying, then she put me on the spot and I couldn't remember a single word. Then she told me about every mountain on the horizon. I wanted to take a picture of them, but somethings just won't come out on film (or digitally as it were).

I wonder if he was one of the masons? He's way up on the tower part that was built in the late 19th century.

Rick Steves says that there is a woman named Marie-Therese Lauper who stands at the top and answers questions. I hope thats who I was talking to.

The architecture was amazing, and I've read a whole booklet on the construction and significance of every twist and turn of the pointy spires but I don't understand the architecture words yet...I'll have to revisit the cathedral before I can give a more detailed description. But in short: There was a small church on the site starting in the 13th century, in 1421 the corner stone for the great cathedral was laid and over the following hundred years or so they built the church--though without the great steeple which wasn't added until 1890-something. There's also lots of political history involved which I don't quite understand because it was all about the city government buying the religious rights from certain groups and such. And the booklet I have is a bad translation into english which doesn't help. The main point: it's an old church.

Oh, a monkey with a looking glass! I wonder if this is a point of historical reference--the great evolution debates were just beginning when this was sculpted I think.

After the church I moved on to the Bear pits and the main tourist center of Bern. The Bern Bears are kept in the pit because legend goes that some guy who had a castle killed a bear in the spot and thus decided to name the city Bern. The bears are miserable looking. They sit on their bottoms with their mouths open skyward hoping that someone will drop a carrot or apple in. It's not the worst bear-enclosure I've ever seen though. It was built in the 1850s and is a concrete with gravel floors, but it's still bigger than the one in Eureka, California.

It was about 90 degrees out so I decided to go into the tourist center to enjoy some air conditioning. I paid the students admission price to see the Bern Show, which sounds a lot cooler than it actually is. The woman asked me how old I was and I said 17. She said, oh, I thought you could have gotten a 16 and under rate. Maybe next time.

The Bern Show is a light and picture show based around a three dimensional map of Bern. I think they stole the idea from Gettysburg's Electric Map show. The map twists and turns and lights show important areas. On the walls they show pictures relevant to whatever history they're talking about at the time. They even had ghostly Napoleonic uniforms march out to give one of Napoleons' speeches to Bern. The show was alright but it went so fast that I didn't learn terribly much from it and at the end I had to sit through a 10 minute tourist commercial for the city.

From the Bern show I headed up to watch the old clock chime. I stood in the middle of the street with about a hundred other tourists and listened to some shop blast Tom Petty's Free Fallin' for what seemed like 20 minutes. I had no Idea the song was so long. The clock finally went off--some bird crows, a creepy elf thing rings a bell and a few bears circle the bottom and Father time turns an hour glass upside down. It was the lamest thing I've ever seen. Well, it was cool, but I was hot and tired and cranky.

While I was in Bern I also saw the Swiss National Bank and the square outside where 1/2 of Switzerland's gold stock is buried. I saw the parliament building, but couldn't take a tour because it's still being renovated. I think I'd like to go back in the next few months and see the inside, since it is the capitol of Switzerland. I did get some free booklets that detail the swiss governmental procedures and history. A tour would have been easier though. And I saw a fountain that had a large ogre eating children on it.

And then it stormed. Lots of thunder and lightening and torrential downpours. That was my trip to Bern. Then I got on the train (I can ride the train for free after 7 now...) and went to Luzern.