2005 Switzerland

Although when Gina and I travel we always go carry on, we decided to try something new this trip and go ultra-light... like just what we could carry on our backs. What made this a bit tricky is the standby travel rules require "casual business" attire in order to get in first class. That meant my size 12 hiking boots had to go in the backpack... they took up half my packing space! Gina definitely had the packing advantage.

After pretty much giving up on there being room on the lone Delta US to Zurich flight, they called our names at the last minute and we were on our way. About 9 hours later we were in Zurich. *** The Swiss rail system is outstanding by all accounts except for making it easy to figure out the cheapest way to get from point A to B to C to D over the period of several days. I spent a lot of time before the trip trying all the various combinations of unlimited travel passes, 1/2 fare passes, and other pass types and it ultimately seemed to work out about the same cost so we bought a 4 day "flexi saver pass" which could be used for any 4 days in an 8 day period. Fortunately the train rides are incredibly scenic which made the $400 cost easier to swallow.

Zurich is about 4 1/2 hours from Zermatt, where we would be staying for the first part of the trip. Since we would be going through Bern, the capital city, we spent the day there (hard to fall asleep from jet lag while walking around a city).

It was about 11:30 when we arrived so we set off to find food. Now I'm not the most adventurous guy for playing the "pick the most interesting sounding German word on the menu" game but at least I did get my lunch from a cafe that had German sandwich names displayed. Still not sure what the odd white sauce on my sandwich was but it tasted pretty good. Gina caved though and headed for more familiar territory. *** This was also our first food sticker shock. I attributed it to being in a food court in the Bern train station but it turns out Switzerland is one pricey country to eat in... we are talking $10 minimum for a mini-size McMeal. Thankfully they don't throw two handfuls of McKetchup packs in the bag like in the states as those add about $.50 each. McKaching.

Why are all German street names a minimum of 20 characters? I have a real problem trying to keep them straight because after about 15 characters I give up trying to phonetically pronounce and memorize them. Where is Ryan when you need him and those two years of German he has under his belt.

Now we find out we could have brought Kip with us (yeah that would have been real fun).

The Bern Parliament building.

Einstein did most of his famous work while living in Bern working as a patent office clerk and this is the 100 year anniversary of when he wrote some of his most famous articles. So of course there was no shortage of Einstein hats, candy, etc.

The house he lived in is now a small museum. It was pretty neat standing in the same place he lived while doing this work.

This clock tower was built between 1191 and 1250. At each hour (actually 4 minutes before the hour) the various figurines begin a show that lasts several minutes.

Part of the ornate decorations on the cathedral. Construction started in 1421 and continued until 1573. The 328 ft high bell tower was not completed until 1893.

A narrow alley way that had interesting lighting and shadows.

The Aare river. No the white balance is not off in this shot... the water really is a deep turquoise color.

We watched a short movie about Bern that talked about the infamous bear pits but we were so tired I think we were half (or more) asleep :( As I recall, the brown bear is the mascot of the city or something like that. This is one of several "bear pits" where some very large brown bears spend their days opening their mouths as tourists toss carrots down into the pits.

Those small ripples in the water just in front of the bridge are some swimmers drifting downstream with the very fast current.

After walking around Bern for 4 hours in the warm sun we took the Bern Mobile back to the train station to retrieve our backpacks and head on to Zermatt.

Zermatt is about a 3 1/2 hour train ride from Bern. I feared it was going to be really hard to stay awake at this point in the day, especially after walking all afternoon but the scenery was so incredible that we had no problem.

Lake Thun

Parasailing near Thun

Note the abrupt tree line.