I had been to Bern, Switzerland once before with my parents, and even though the weather was pretty cold and dreary, we still enjoyed ourselves. So I knew I wanted to go back with Jeremy. As I’ve mentioned before, Switzerland is extremely expensive, so it’s been kind of a struggle doing everything we want to do, without feeling like we are breaking the bank. I didn’t realize when booking our trip just how pricey everything would be, including public transportation, so I figured we’d spend three nights in Zurich, then three nights in a smaller town to experience something else. We also got such a well-priced apartment in Zurich that I still didn’t realize, even after buying the plane tickets. Once we left Zurich and got to our Airbnb in Wunnewil, we kind of stayed put. We knew we wanted to go into Bern, but after being at the train stop and using the machines to buy tickets, we saw that it would $40 round trip for us to go into the city, and it was already the afternoon. We decided to stay back so Jeremy could rest his knee, and I went on a run. The next day, we made it out of the apartment slightly earlier (we have trouble getting out of our temporary residences early for some reason), and headed to Bern, the capital of Switzerland.

No visit to Bern is complete without visiting Zytglogge, the town’s main clock, at the hour to see the little show the moving figures put on.

The astronomical clock was built in 1530. The king on his throne waves his scepter in one hand and turns an hourglass for each hour in the other.

Where Einstein lived from 1903 to 1905. I took a tour of the apartment with my parents a few years back, but skipped it this time around.

Another main attraction is the Barengraben, or Bear Pit. Bears are the symbol of Bern (and its literal translation), and bears have historically been placed in a concrete pit in the city center. Thankfully, the city opened up BarenPark in 2009, a much larger piece of land that includes some of the River Aar for the bears to play in. You can see the BarenPark in the left of this photo.

Even though they have more room to roam now, I still couldn’t help but feel bad that these huge, majestic creatures were in captivity. But I feel that way whenever I’m at a zoo, too.

Of course Jeremy and I had to have a picnic, so we picked this nice square near the Parliament building (these public squares that people sit on are so incredibly clean, it’s very impressive).

Picked up a can of Prosecco at the market… Jealous, Lis?

After our picnic, we walked around some more, stumbling across this square with the coolest church in it I’ve ever seen.
This was actually in Zurich, but I forgot to include it. I looked at a vending machine to see if I could afford anything (I couldn’t), and saw that above the cannabis drink there was a pregnancy test (the MaybeBaby pocket), and this was outside the Zurich Zoo: