Stunning Switzerland (II) - BERN

24 March 2008
Clocks, Bears and Fountains

A city of lesser renown (relative to Zurich and Geneva), Bern is actually the capital of Switzerland. But it certainly does not look the part, for it is a really puny city which hardly commands any feeling of awe or power whatsoever. Yet, it is a pretty little town with rows of nice little buildings, which helped pushed its nomination through, to the UNESCO list of world heritage sites.

You know you're in Switzerland when you see clocks... way too many of them, on clock towers, along the streets, outside shops... and in Bern, we had a little adventure with them clock towers.

CLOCKS
After finally arriving in Bern after our tour of Geneva, we found that luyi, mac, bingkai and jian feng (who had just arrived from prague that morning) had already finished walking through the town/city and already on the way back to the train station. They instructed us to meet at the 'MacDonald's at the big Clock Tower'. that sounded simple enough, we thought. cities usually only had one main clock tower. There was a huge clock in the middle of the train station, and a MacDonald's in the basement, so we happily headed there. But it was not the right one. So we ventured out of the train station with our huge bags, in search for the rendez-vous point. We saw a big clock tower right outside, and thought that had to be it, only to walk completely around and catch no sight of the familiar golden arches. But since MacDonald's is so ubiquitous, it didn't take us long to see a sign that said 'M - 200m', so we followed the sign, only to land up in the wrong restaurant again. We asked for the next nearest one and headed out into terrible weather, then we saw IT. we had thought that the first clock tower was big, but this one was GIGANTIC (picture below). and then we saw bingkai standing outside MacDonald's standing in a look-out position. To the relief of familiar ones basking in the warmth MacDonald's provided, we had finally arrived.


BEARS
The guys had enough of the city, and the weather only helped to dissuade them to take us on another tour. So the task fell on luyi, who gladly (presumably) brought us to see the only attraction Bern had to offer - 'bear pit'. When i first heard that, i thought it was some cheem german name.... but the story behind its significance is that when the Swiss first found Bern, the first thing they spotted were brown bears, and so the bears have now become the symbol of switzerland, and there's a pit with 2 bears put on display:

but they must have been qutie afraid of luyi, who had earlier tried to feed by bananas by throwing it them, hitting their faces, so they refused to come out of their dens a second time for us. either that or they must have been confused by the weather, cos it started to snow suddenly again when it's supposed to be spring, and they went back into hibernation, thinking winter wasn't over. (in any case, luyi, please send me the pics of them!)

FOUNTAINS
Another thing rather characteristic of any Swiss town is that it has countless number of fountains, most of them without water. they can be in the middle of the street, or at a corner.

Here's luyi and i on a street that easily had 5 or 6 fountains.

And David and I at some random corner. notice the flag of the canton, and the bear on it?


We also went into this church, whose name i fail to recall.



And finally, here's some reason to suggest why the city qualified for UNESCO. the picture does not do any justice to how pretty the rows of houses really are, or how the charming little river that runs into the city is, against the mountains that form the usual Swiss backdrop. I blame the bad weather for the bad picture. It was cold and gloomy. and snow reflects light.



And that was it, we did bern in, like, 1 hour.

But i never looked at Clocks and Fountains in the same way again. Dunno about bears yet, cos i've yet to see any (alive, that is).