Swiss Cheese (April 4th)

Holy catfish on a stick (St. Catfish tastes better)! Woke up a little hung over slightly. I don't know how? lightweight? Hopefully it was the Belgian beer that was that awesome. We woke up at 7:30 Am, to make a train at about 8:30 to Bern. No problem, right? Should be fine.. unless one spends the next 20-30 minutes debating whether or not to take the next train, and be vagrants by sleeping in later.

NO! We must press on! Otherwise, we've blown the day (or so the voice tells me). Quickly devouring a banana for sustenance (idiot) we set out on a mad sprint with our baggage to catch the train.

There are those stories in hollywood, where the person runs with all their matched luggage to catch the train/plane/dumb broad/dude and of course makes it. Well, those guys are con artists, it's not even real for them, they don't feel the agony of running on zero sleep, a sick throat and constantly swallowing the banana (chagrin.) that keeps wanting to come up my throat and say "hello!" every block or so.

Naturally, like any absolutely unique masterpiece of film, we made it with seconds to spare. The conductor was blowing the whistle and the doors were closing as we jumped on. My original plan was to write all about things on the train, but instead I decided that just letting myself die would be a better idea.

Of course, that didn't happen either. Instead I collapsed in a heap for the majority of the train ride like a hobo.... and awoke in Bern, city of Bears! Roar.

Luggage is heavy. Did we really want to carry it? Nein! Nyet! No! We packed it up into a luggage locker in the station.... and realized we had no Swiss Francs (convert to euros, PLEASE). The conversion machine is down? Gee, great. Luckily, the local pretzel (Bretzel König!) stand worker was more than willing to give me change after I payed her in Euros for a sunflower seed pretzel (it's good). Unluckily, she just gave me change back in MORE Euros, after looking confused at me with my poor german & hand motions and then grabbed a hidden tin box filled with Euros and was painstakingly converting the cost. Francless still, we turned around and managed to find a machine in the catacombs of the train station. It gave us some funky looking dollar bills... that we STILL COULDN'T USE. The machine took change! Once again our pretzel lady had to deal with us ..."OHHH... CHANGE!" and we at last, were able to enter the heart of the city unencumbered.

Following the wisdom of the tour guide, we set out onto the main street of bern. What a lovely street! There's no cars, just people walking around... "wait a minute.. what's these tracks that look like railways in the middle..." so there were rail cars that we could avoid. We saw one coming... and then nimbly moved out of the way of its path.... and then we nearly lost Ted. The BUS barreled towards us moving out of the rail line boundaries, unheeding our fear stricken eyes. If he hadn't moved one foot over, he might have been dead. True story. Soon we were looking back and forth franticly as we made our way down the street to make sure we wouldn't be in the warpath of these harbingers of doom.

Along with knives and fondu the swiss sure like their clocks. We saw many along our way and each was quite unique. This is where I'd put in a picture of a cool looking clock, to accompany a really boring paragraph. However, once again, I'm unable to load a picture of any sort... so whoever is reading this should just draw one in paint and write "cool clock" next to it, and then upload it in a comment to save everyone else some work. Which reminds me, feel free to express your enjoyment/distaste in some way on here. It makes it kind of interesting for me, and who doesn't love attention?

Astronomically correct clock

At any rate... this street was packed with all sorts of shops, and if by all sorts, I mean they came out of every orifice of the city. There were even these "cellar" shops, that came out of the ground. Neato. Too bad that all the shops on this street were secretly some breed of predator, designed to feast on the most naïve of tourists by robbing them of their money in exchange for a little snack, or perhaps a shiny trinket. Long story short, this cool looking but deadly road was soon abandoned.
- Come into my underground lair...

At this point, we were dehydrated, hungry, and of course crabby from being dehydrated and hungry. We managed to find a cheap, yet delicious falafel place in one of the back alleys of the city along with a split level target like store with very very cheap groceries and drinks. +1 for team Weaver. Choosing the unbeaten path sure has its pros! Alas... it extracts a terrifying price for your new power..



We decided to visit the city's famous bear pit, which happened to be right across this bridge, that was next to another bridge. So we went across, and promptly got lost, wandering residential areas looking for this so called pit. Eventually, we figured that it must be some other bridge, or it was a myth to keep everyone laughing at us.
At least getting lost got us some nice views.


Naturally, the world isn't centered around one or two people, no matter how much they wish it would be; so we eventually found the pit. Guess what? It had bears in it! Well... 1 bear. For all of the work, I have to admit I was a little underwhelmed. I suppose they can't really just throw people in there anymore for a good show. Dang. I could sure think of a few....
Bern's bear... he looks lonely

After being confused for a while and walking around more, we finally decided to get back onto the train so we could make it to Interlaken, the alpine village outside of Bern where we would be spending the night.

Upon arriving, we managed to only be lost for a short period of time, and then located the place of our staying. We were greeted by an exceptionally nice lady who was more than willing to help us out with anything. She gave us a few recommendations for places to eat for the night, and set us up with our room. After depositing our junk safely behind locked doors, we set out to once again suppress the rage in our stomachs, but this time, in style!

We stepped (I ducked) into a nice authentic swiss restaurant in a less busy side of town, and promptly ordered some Swiss beer, along with a giant pot of fondu with mushrooms. After a few awkward attempts, our server was more than willing to snatch the poker from my hand and show us how eating fondu was really done. It was veeery tasty, but it was a LOT of food which catalyzed lethargy.
fondu for you! no... just for me

So, we went back to the B&B and went to bed. That's that. End Scene.