Again, we used the amazingly fast, reliable and 'designed to put Metro to shame' trains which leave Geneva station every hour and whizzed through the lush green country side to our first destination - Berne.
Berne is the nation's capital and is in the German speaking part of Switzerland. This said, it took us an hour to find our way out of the train station and to a tourist information centre because the only German phrase which we knew was "Ich bin ein Berliner". Believe it or not, telling people you are a jelly-filled doughnut, does not help you find your way to the nearest toilet when lost.
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| ma mere et moi |
In the Old City of Berne there is a beautiful clock tower which chimes every hour. It is located at the very beginning of the longest shopping promenade in Switzerland, which (no surprises there) filled in many hours of bargain hunting. I really loved the whole strip- it was such a happy and lovely place to walk around with the bright flower boxes on windows of old buildings, the fountains placed right in the middle of the road to separate the different sides, the street performers playng the guitar, the cello, the harp and every other instrument imaginable.
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| a mumma and a pappa and a wee bear |
Berne is famous for it's bear pit which has a family of brown bears happily living on the city moat just in front of the middle city gate. Yep, that's right- some people look out their windows and see four brown bears in their back yard instead of a labrador.
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| I'm not sure if I'm 19 or 9 |
One of my favourite things which I saw today was all the street art and grafitti hidden in unusual places around the city. I found the messages they were writing to be really intriguining and much more interesting to look at and read than the horrible tagging and scribble you normally see everywhere.
Here's a snapshot of a few I saw-
