Einstein lived here, it must be good.

A Berne fountain with the clock tower in the distance
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Switzerland. Land of cheese, chocolate, mountains, and braces. And so far, land of the not-too-shabby weather with sun all day, everyday.

Switzerland doesn't have its own language, but chameleonicly changes its language depending on which neighbouring country the city is closest. In the case of Berne (and every other Swiss city we're going to), its German. Now I know as much German as I do French (and Spanish and Portugese), so we were off to a rocking start. Fortunately, Switzerland has the best English speaking ratio to date. In fact, I think we only came across 2 people in all of our Switzerland travels that didn't speak English.

You may commence singing 'The Hills are Alive' at your own leisure

Richard eating fondue
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Switzerland, in their eternal neutralness, is not part of the EU and thus does not use the Euro. Kind of annoying, but you get used to it. They should really have put more thought into their coins though. The 0.50 coin is the same nice as the 0.10 coin (about the same as the Aussie 5c coin), the 0.20 is bigger (Aussie 20c), and the 5.00 coin is freakin huge (bigger than the Aussie 50c coin, but round). On top of that, they thought it would be great if they create just ONE bronze coloured coin (0.05). What's the deal with that?

View of Berne
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Despite my apparent dislike our their currency (its okay, really), I gotta hand it to the Swiss: they are the nicest people (generally speaking) I've ever met. I don't even think we met one surley Swiss our entire time there. In fact, we had several people (randoms, not shop owners) ask us if we needed directions anywhere when they saw us looking at a map. It just makes me want to go on a high five spree through Switzerland - if that wasn't too creepy.

Before coming to Switzerland, we'd heard that it was extremely expensive and thus were prepared for the worst. After being here, though, its really no worse than any other country. Its no Portugal, but its no more expensive than France. The main shock is the high numbers on things (like 7 Swiss Francs for a coffee at Starbucks), but if you convert it back to Euro (~4.65) its the same price as most other Western European counties.

One of the Berne bears
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The hostel we were staying in, Berne Backpackers, was on a street called Rathausstrasse. You read that correctly: Rat House Street. Despite the grim name, it was actually a very nice street with nar a rat in sight. The hostel itself was really quite nice, with a really good common room (internet was 1 Franc for 5 minutes), kitchen, foosball table, and was even on top of a not-too-loud-but-trendy bar which was nice 'cause I'm lazy.

Berne (the capital) is a really nice old town that has a really traditional feel to it. There's not a heap to do there, but we had no problem filling 2 days.

Elena enjoying the picnic and sunshine on Gurten mountain
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All around the city are these really cool fountains, including an ogre (apparently, it just looked like some guy in a suit to me) eating children. All are of similar style and there are quite a few of them.

On the first day we went to visit the Zytglogge clock tower. It sounds like I'm choking on a piece of chocolate, is an actual clock tower invented by a gunsmith who had never created a clock in his life (and subsequently never created another). The cool thing about it is you get to see (and walk around) all the workings inside the tower. In addition to telling the time, it also shows the current date, day of the week, phase of the moon, and current sign of the zodiac. Every hour there's a cool little dance that goes on with the little figures up high, complete with a rather surley looking Chronos and a bear hitting a bell.

Speaking of bears, Berne means bear. In fact, they even have 2 bears living in a pit there that you can visit and throw food (apple slices bought at a nearby shop) at. Their current habitat is fairly ordinary for a town that apparently praises them highly, consisting of a 15m² pit with water and trees but still a bit of concete. I hear, though, that they are in the process of creating a new area for them to reside in that is much nicer. Despite their current situation, the bears didn't look depressed (not that I'm a reputable source on bear psychology) and were playing around and enjoying the apples that came their way occasionally.

Berne also happens to be the city where Einstein lived for many years, and it was there that he came up with his theory of relativity. We visited his house (setup like a museum now) and came out feeling smarter than when we entered. No, not really.

For lunch we got ourselves some bratwurst and bread roll for 5 franc (2.80 euro) and it was fantastic. Australia might like HP and the US might like tomato sauce but in Swizterland mustard is king. And how. Needless to say there would be much more bratwurst being eaten by me before leaving Swizterland.

On the second day we went up the Gurten mountain (via a furnicular) and had a picnic in the grassy area up there. It was a beautiful day and thus a perfect thing to do. You may commence singing "The Hills are Alive" at your own leisure.

We were at Gurten well into the afternoon and thus didn't do much after that. In the evening, we had a few drinks with the American brother (Alan) and sister (Lauren) that were staying in our room. By some fluke of chance Alan happneed to be reading reading the same book series as me (The Dark Tower by Steven King) and we made a deal that saw a beer and several of my books swapped for the next three books in the series. That cozy little deal saved me upwards of 40 euro in books, which was great.