Bears in Bern

We liked the Swiss capital. We only stayed for two nights, but it was very pleasant, albeit damp. Arriving in the evening, we booked into our hostel and settled ourselves in. It was relatively late and raining so we didn't go out to see anything of the town, but enjoyed a nice early night.

Our first tourist spot was, of course, the bear pits, though we did stop on the way to them to have a look inside a very cool 19th-century church (it had Swiss flowers painted on the ceiling). One bear was out and active and very kindly ambled up and down for us. The pits are fairly Victorian in style, but they are building newer, more natural habitat-y pits to be opened next year, I think. We hung over the edge for a while talking to it, then went into the visitor centre to get transport cards.

Bern was the city in which young Albert Einstein was residing when he decided that e equalled mc². There are all sorts of museums about his life and science, and we decided to start with the Natural History Museum. Unfortunately the exhibition there proved to be temporary only, and hence not covered by our travel and attraction cards. We decided to give it a miss and snobbed them for the Alpine Museum over the road. This was a basic sort of museum, not too interactive, with lots of relief maps of the Alps and stuffed alpine animals. It was here that we, sadly, had our only glimpse of edelweiss, and that dried and in a tacky kind of display case. Still, it wasn't that bad. They had some very good books on alpine things and we watched a sweet, if somewhat soporific, slide show. We then went to the house where Einstein had lived, which is now a museum dedicated to his discoveries in Bern. It was very well displayed, with the rooms set up as they were when he lived there and facsimiles of many of his notes, etc. It was good to learn a little bit more about him.

We decided not to leave Bern straight away on the Wednesday, but took a funicular up to a hill on the edge of town that promised good views and a playground. It was actually a great amusement area, with a little train, a huge wooden activity area, little gypsy caravans and cable cars to sit in, and odd sculptures. The Swiss really know how to do good playgrounds. We had a nice snooze on the green grass for a while before going back down and making our way to the station.