Saturday was weird. I woke up in
Innsbruck, Austria and went to bed in Worcester. It continued on Sunday where I
had to suffer the indignity of making my own breakfast! This of course signals
that my idyllic trip to Europe has concluded and it is now time to inflict a
recap on those of you foolish enough to wander to this blogsite. Thankfully
most of this will be told through the accompanying photos instead of my
fractured prose. So here we go. First of all this was the first time I ever
took part in a truly guided tour and I loved it. Everything was taken care of,
from picking us up at home, dropping us back there with everything in between
including four star hotels and a Turkish guide (more on him later). AAA has definitely
won me over and this will not be the last time I use them as well as Collette
Travel which was the actual tour operator. This was a trip I’d long promised to
my wife, who’d never been to Europe. We were waiting for our ride to show up
figuring it would be some sort of van only to be surprised when a very nice
limousine showed up with a nattily attired driver. He was a very nice young man
who entertained us on our drive to the airport and also warned us about a
European scam involving fake Wi-Fi accounts near popular restaurants that prey
on tourists trying to log onto the real restaurant Wi-Fi. We were flying Swiss
Air and got to the airport three hours ahead of our flight which made for a
leisurely approach. We had time for a long dinner outside our gate while
awaiting our overnight flight to Zürich.
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| In Bern Day 1 |
The plane was a bit of a
disappointment as the boarding ticket bragged about Swiss Air being voted with having
the best economy seating in Europe. Our flight back on Lufthansa put a definite
lie to that claim as the Swiss Air seats were very close and uniformly uncomfortable.
We took off around 9pm on Thursday and landed in Zürich at 12 noon on Friday.
We made a spectacularly bad choice in immigration line choice thinking ours was
moving the most quickly which it was, at least until the young lady immediately
in front of us. She apparently had some sort of issue and we waited for twenty
minutes while they tried to sort her out. We emerged from baggage claim to hear
our names being called over the terminal loudspeakers. Our driver was desperately
looking for us and was about to give up. We were united with him and a group of
fellow travelers for the two hour drive to Bern, where we would be staying.
I sort of remember the trip to Bern due
to my semi-conscious status as the body tried to figure out what time of day it
really was. Bern, the capitol of Switzerland, was centrally located for the
different tours we were taking and since it’s also listed as a UNESCO heritage
site made a great choice. For a capitol city on a Friday afternoon it was very
quiet, no bustle at all. Our hotel, Hotel Baren am Bundeplatz, was located
across the street from the Swiss Parliament building and in the heart of the
old city. We were immediately immersed in cobblestoned streets and atmosphere.
We met our tour director, a Turk living in Germany called Oz, upon walking into
the hotel lobby. Our luggage was whisked away and we were immediately sent up
to our rooms to freshen up. Our room featured two twin beds pushed together but
other than that was fine and offered a nice view of a the backside of an
adjoining street across a courtyard. My
wife was not pleased with the twin bed arrangement and the hotel staff sent up
a conversion kit that created a double bed for us. This is important because
one of my roles in our marriage is to provide on-call body heat to my cold
challenged Favorite Panamanian. We had a couple hours before the first get together
of the tour so we took a nice walk around the parliament building behind which
we got some spectacular views of the lower city lining the River Aare which
surrounds the old city on three sides. I noticed a number of the rooftops had
been converted to growing grass and other plants. Bern is a fairly small city
with a population less than Worcester but had almost omnipresent public
transportation with trolleys and buses. Something I also noticed and which was
confirmed throughout my trip, Europeans smoke cigarettes like it’s still the
1960s.
Since we were operating on one hour
sleep I was determined to stay awake until the appropriate time at night to overcome
any jet lag. While my wife rested I went out in search of a convenience store
to purchase the requisite hotel room snacks. I ended up seeing a large
percentage of the old town until I found one – two doors down from the hotel. I
returned to the hotel to make some notes and the desk chair immediately
collapsed on me, not an auspicious start but it was quickly replaced. We then
attended our first meeting of all the tour group members. Oz had us introduce
ourselves which was interesting. My wife and I were definitely in the younger
half of the group which speaks volumes about the ages involved. There was a
nice couple from England and ten people from a single Ohio family who’d traced
their roots to the Bern area and were chasing them down. This was followed with
a complementary meal at a nearby restaurant where we were treated to my first
ever (and last) cheese fondue dinner. We were seated with a very nice couple
from Ft Worth, Texas at a table overlooking one of the main thoroughfares of
Old Bern. The walk back to the hotel confirmed my earlier impression, for a
Friday night in a supposedly vibrant city, it was deathly quiet.
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Wife in Front of Swiss Parliamentary Building
Across Street from Hotel |
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| Our Hotel |
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| First Few Minutes in Bern |
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| Wife Behind the Parliamentary Building |
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| Views of Lower Bern and Aare River |
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| Note Grass on Rooftops |
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| Happy First Timer to Europe |
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| Nearby Park with Fountain Honoring Mailmen (!) |
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| On Walkway Exiting Park |
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| Wife in Plaza Next to Hotel |
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One of Remaining Towers from Original Town Wall
First Night Restaurant Immediately to Right |
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| Typical Bern Street View with Trolley Approaching |
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| Oz Talking to Group at First Night Dinner |
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| View from our Hotel Room |
Day 2 started off perfectly, at least
for my wife, because our first stop was an immense rose garden which included a
lecture on roses, one of my wife’s absolute passions. The rose garden was
located on a hill across the river from and overlooking the old town. It provided
some stunning views. Our next stop was the bear pit, literally. Bern is
supposedly named after bears because that was the first animal the founder ran
across when he was scouted the location. The bears didn’t seem that thrilled
but Oz pointed out the enclosure had been expanded so the bears could wander
down to the river through an extensive park and jump in if they wanted to. I
later saw them doing just that. Bern is proud that Albert Einstein once lived
there and he was alleged to have visited this location regularly, there was a
cool statue commemorating that. We then set off on a walking tour of Old Bern.
Bern was founded in the 12trh century but was completely rebuilt in the 1400s after
it burned down. There were a number of medieval drinking fountains in the
middle of many streets still providing drinkable water. They also provided a glimpse
into earlier times. One of the most infamous was called “the child eater”
because it shows a guy literally eating a child. It is an example of anti-Semitism
because the eater is purportedly depicted as Jewish and Jews were persecuted as
child thieves in the middle ages. It was kind of grisly. We wandered through
the cobblestones dodging other tour groups and saw the two remaining towers of
the original town wall, one of which included an elaborate glockenspiel with a
number of moving statues. We passed by Einstein’s house and ended the tour at
the central cathedral which dates back to the 13th century. It’s now
a protestant church and featured a detailed and semi-gruesome depiction of
doomsday. I guess the Swiss have always been a bit pessimistic. Since we were
in a church and that requires an act of congress to get my wife to leave we
missed out on the glockenspiel sounding. We made our way to a park next to the
church which featured a bunch of booths selling mementoes. While my wife
shopped I took in some more great views of the river. There was a also a guy
playing one of those long mountain bugles. We then tried to make a trip to the
hills accessed by a cog railway recommended by Oz. Unfortunately he gave us the
wrong directions and after wandering the perimeter of outer Bern for nearly an
hour we declared victory and returned to central Bern to find a ghost town.
Everything closes at 5pm on Saturday and remains closed until Monday, just
plain weird. We did find an American themed restaurant, loaded with kitsch,
near the hotel for dinner. Again, this was Saturday night but the only people
out were tourists.
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| Wife in Rose Garden |
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| View of Old Bern from Rose Garden |
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| I Think she Sniffed Every Single One |
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| Closer View |
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| Rose Garden Selfie |
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| I Think she was Happy |
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| The Garden Was Beautiful |
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| Another View of a Very Happy Camper |
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| The Bear Pit |
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| Trying to Pick out Which Tourist to Eat |
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| Hanging with Al |
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| Watch your Hands Buddy! |
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| One of Many Fountains |
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| Glockenspiel |
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| Another Fountain |
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| Child Eater Fountain |
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| I Wasn't Kidding |
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| Old Town |
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| Glockenspiel Closer View |
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| Glockenspiel Top |
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| Glockenspiel Middle |
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| Yep, Another Fountain |
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| Einstein's House - Now a Museum |
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| And Another |
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| This One had Moses |
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| The Big Cathedral |
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| Pews for Children- Exquisite Detail |
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| Organ Loft |
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| Doomsday Entry |
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| Aare From Beside the Cathedral |
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| Bugler |
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| Trolley Ride to Nowhere |
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| Beautiful Dinner Date |
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| Troll Across Table from Her |
Day 3 was a very busy day as we set
out on the bus for Lake Geneva. Our initial destination was the town of Montreux.
This town was immortalized in the Deep Purple song Smoke on the Water and lies directly across the lake from the French
Alps. We walked along the lakeshore which featured a number of sculptures
including a well honored one of Freddie Mercury of Bohemian Rhapsody fame.
Queen owned a recording studio there and the area boasts a number of famous
celebrity residents. The area is actually called the French Riviera (I didn’t
get it). I loved our next stop which was the Château de Chillon, a well preserved
castle built on rocks just off shore and one of the principal castles for the House
of Savoy and at least one pope. The dungeons were notable as 18th
century tourists carved their names into the sandstone pillars. One such was
Lord Byron, who later penned a poem called the “Prisoner of Chillon”. We
returned to Montreux for lunch and then a train ride through the Swiss Alps to
the celebrity haven ski resort town of Gstaad. The train, the Goldenpass
Panoramic Train, ran through some truly remarkable, picturesque Swiss
countryside. Gstaad wasn’t that remarkable but it was Sunday and virtually
everything was shut down. Since the senior citizen quotient of our tour group
was high, a long bathroom break was needed before we boarded the bus which met
us there. I used this time to wander around the town a little bit. The long bus
ride back to Bern on some back roads was incredibly scenic. Switzerland is so
beautiful with soaring mountains, vibrant green Alpine meadows and omnipresent
chalets festooned with flower boxes. I could see the wheels turning on my
wife’s head about how we could equip our house with something similar.
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| Lion Monument |
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| Eloquently Sad Lion |
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| Selfie |
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| Wife Always Making Friends |
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| Central Lucerne |
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| Wife on Chapel Bridge |
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| Chapel Bridge |
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| Altstadt Views |
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| Looking Up the River Ruess to Chapel Bridge |
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| Jesuit Church |
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| Looking Downriver |
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| Inside Church |
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| 13th Century Fortification - the Water Tower Beside Chapel Bridge |
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| Add caption |
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| Crossing Bridge note Paintings Above |
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| The Chocolate Waterfall |
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| Lake Lucerne |
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| Start of Cog Railway up Mount Pilatus |
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| Lake Lucerne from Train |
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| Train Selfie |
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| Wife Stole Camera |
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| Going up Mountain |
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| Higher |
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| And Higher |
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| The Tree line |
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| Hotel at Top |
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| Looking Down from my Solo Walk - Catching my Breath |
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| Clouds Parted Momentarily |
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| Gondola Down |
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| Looking Back up From Gondola |
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| View from Second Gondola |
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| Downhill |
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| Towards Lucerne |
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| Dinner in Bern |
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RECURRING
CHARACTERS
BRS
- Blog Reader the Sequel
- second granddaughter; FBR - First Blog
Reader - first granddaughter, ABFA –
Amazing Best Family Athlete = my daughter in law; Wingman – my son in law; Keene
Friends 1 & 2 – friends since high school from my home town of Keene,
NH; Soxfather - my brother in law; Great Aunt = my elder sister; Cantankerous Friend – friend since
grade school who likes to argue about everything, poses as radical leftist to
attract women; Pittsburgh College
Roommate – high school friend, also a “Minor Celebrity” in Pittsburgh; Deckzilla – our backyard deck which
grew to monstrous dimensions once my wife got involved in planning; Maine and Virginia Musqueteras – two
close friends of my wife – her US sisters, my wife is the 3rd musquetera
(musketeer); Riggins - also known as
the Grandpuppy, son's dog, surrogate grandchild while awaiting arrival of the
BRS; PanaGals – female
relatives/friends of my wife from Panama; Panamanian/Latin
Mafia – inevitable group of Latino friends my wife accumulates wherever we
have lived & their spouses; Neighborhood
Mafioso - wife's close friend and Panamanian mafia member, Favorite Panamanian - the wife (of
course); First Friday – celebrations
to mark the First Friday of the Week; Deckzilla
Dude – senior citizen carpenter/contractor; Voices of Inappropriate Worth - members of public who come to every
Worcester public meeting to complain, all are on public assistance along with
demeanor issues
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