Enter Switzerland - Bern

Here is my post from Bern yesterday...

Guten Tag!

Bern - The capital of Switzerland! We got off the train and as soon as we walked out of the station it was a real party atmosphere. Young people were everywhere, and they were drinking, partying, blowing horns, stuff like that. We figured it was World Cup related. Unfortunately we had train issues (things were booked full) and did not get into Bern until real late compared to the plan - 7pm instead of 11am. So we basically lost our whole day for Bern, and did not get to enjoy all the fun. Too bad too, we finally found a city that was busy and open past 6pm.

Little thing I want to mention - Swiss Franks look really cool. Look at them, they are so cool! My picture is just of 20s, but the 10s are cool too. And the 5s are just real big coins, a little bigger then those old 50 cent pieces used to be. Same with single franks and 2 franks, but they are pretty small coins.

We found our way through the city to a park. In the park there were these awesome giant chess sets where the board is carved on the ground and the pieces were like 3 feet high. It was really cool, if we had the whole day maybe we would have played a game ha.

When we arrived at our hostel, it was pretty nice. We had our own room, and the place was big with a sort of gran hall dining area and common room, and it had a real cool mural on the wall outside. We got settled and then headed out. It was dark now, and we were planning on an early train to Interlaken so we decided to get dinner. We were excited because for the first time we were in a place where the dollar was stronger - one CHF (Swiss Frank) = 0.87 USD, hooray!

So we got to the places to eat and... wow... Switzerland is insanely expensive! What the hell?! I mean the dollar isn't THAT much stronger to justify spending money here. I got a super tiny (took 5 bites) salad for 10 CHF. We ended up spending about 30 CHF each on dinner ($27) and a large part was the little unexpected twist... we asked for water, and apparently Switzerland is one of those countries you have to ask for 'natural water' in. Meaning we got seltzer. Seltzer that cost 7 CHF each!. What the hell!? So that pissed me off. The meal was pretty good, but not nearly worth it. And the place looked pretty cool at least, with a waterway running through the middle of the restaurant.

So we turned in for the night. Interlaken tomorrow, very excited! Interlaken was something I was really looking forward too.