BERN, LUCERNE & BASEL

We felt like we could have stayed for another week in Gimmelwald and as it was due to snow in the afternoon we really wanted to stay one more night, but we had already booked our next few nights in Bern, so we had no choice but to leave.

We hung around for as long as we could in Gimmelwald, hoping that we would see the snow fall, but by 2pm we had to make tracks.  A short cable-car back down to the Lauterbrunnen valley, a 30 minute train back to Interlaken and then another hour train and we arrived in Bern.

Not surprisingly, our bodies were feeling the pinch after our huge hike from the previous day, so we cbf'd doing anything of any real substance on our first night.  We went out for a low key dinner at an Indian restaurant and then tried to get a good night's sleep over the painfully loud Spanish bloke snoring in the next bunk.

The next morning we basically told the hostel to get stuffed after they offered us breakfast for 20 euro's and went to the nearest coop supermarket to get some fruit and the nearest bakery for some delicious pastries and the nearest cafe for an overpriced coffee.

the most public of public toilets hah!

Medieval Bern's old town, with 6km of covered arcades and cellar shops/bars descending from the streets is the city's prime attraction.  We joined the throng of people around the 'Zytglogge' (clock tower) at 4 minutes before 10am to watch its revolving figures twirl

The 15th century old town is definitely worthy of its Unesco World Heritage protection order and one of the main reason for this is its decorative fountains depicting historical and folklore characters that lie smack bang in the middle of the streets, all around town.

Our favourite was clearly the giant snacking on children at the Kindlifresserbrunnen, but there were plenty of other cool ones as well.

the fountains were also pretty handy to fill up our water bottles!

With much bigger and modern cities like Zurich and Geneva, it's hard to believe that Bern is the capital of Switzerland, but then again we have Canberra!

With the genteel soul of an old man and the heart of a high-flying 21st-century woman, this beautiful riverside city is both medieval and modern.

Bern was founded in 1191 by Berchtold V and named for the unfortunate bear (barn in local dialect) that was his first hunting victim.  The bear remains the city's mascot, hence the 'Barengraben' that lies right beside the river! 

After watching the bears do their thing and making plenty of stupid yogi bear and boo-boo connotations, we walked further up the hill to catch some great views out over the picture perfect postcard city.

We chilled in the rose garden for a while, taking plenty of photo's, and then discussed what was next on the agenda.

The world's most famous scientist developed his theory of relativity in 1905 at whats now the Einstein Museum, housed in the humble apartment where he lived while working as a clerk in the local patent office.  This sounded cool, but in the end we couldn't be bothered and just decided to keep walking around.

it warmed up enough for me to take my jumper off, but my hands were still freezing!

We walked along the cobble-stone streets, passing more interesting fountains, another huge clock tower  and being Switzerland, plenty of souvenir shops.  The 15th century gothic Munster cathedral was quite appealing from the outside, but pretty boring on the inside.

There was some sort of free outdoor library in the square opposite the Munster and although we couldn't read any of the publications written in either German or French, we were able to rest our legs that were still hurting from the hike in Gimmelwald.

We grabbed a late lunch at the atmospheric Markthalle and then spent the rest of the afternoon doing a bit of shopping and drooling at all of the expensive chocolate shops that all seemed to major in doing special chocolates in the form of roasted chestnuts.

at 5 euro per nut, unfortunately not one of these entered our bellies

Take an all-Swiss wine and beer list, add cheese specialties from the Valais like fondue and raclette, decorate the interior with cool pictures and circular wooden wine racks mounted on cheerful yellow walls, add chequered table cloths and we had what Lonely Planet described as one of the most dynamic Swiss restaurants in the country.  Unfortunately they neglected to mention how expensive it was, so we were limited in what we could order.  In the end we both went for the melted block of raclette cheese on toast with a big salad for almost 20 euro........lucky it was really good!

Being the middle of the week, the nightlife in Bern was pretty non-existent, and as the majority of the people in our hostel were either Asian or just plain boring (or both!), we certainly didn't set the town alight at night.

That night was another painful sleep as we were now surrounded by snorers that made the room rattle like it was an earthquake, it was horrible, we had never heard anything like it, even from pour parents haha.  Eventually we got to sleep though and woke up the next morning ready to head off to Lucerne.

Recipe for a gorgeous Swiss city; take a cobalt lake ringed by massive snow-capped mountains, add a medieval old town and sprinkle it with covered bridges, sunny plazas, candy-coloured houses and waterfront promenades.  Lucerne is bright, beautiful and buzzing with friendly locals and obviously tourists.

Our hostel was quite possibly backpacker heaven with its lake-facing balconies, art-slung walls, relaxing lounges, two kitchens, large rooms and cheap beer!  We arrived around 3pm, checked-in and were lucky enough to have the 4 bunk-bed room to ourselves!

It was a ripper of a day, so we wasted no time in getting out and about to explore.  The only negative of our hostel was that it was a 15-20 minute walk into town, but the views along the way made this walk easily bearable.

The town was alive and kicking when we arrived.  It was a Friday arvo and it seemed like everyone had taken the rest of the day off to just walk around.  There were some interesting buskers around, including this band that were bloody hilarious to watch!

gay as Christmas this guy

As per every other Swiss city we had been to, the place was rife with souvenir stores, I don't know how they all survive with enough postcards, beer mugs, stuffed animals, t-shirts, beanies, cow-bells and of course Swiss army knives to sink a ship!

Another thing that we had become used to was the exceedingly high prices of any decent restaurant, so we decided to cook at the hostel, which we hadn't done in a very very very long time and I had noticed that Anna was itching to get into the kitchen!

We stocked up on supplies for dinner and the next two breakfast's at the local coop supermarket and then strolled back home along the dreamy promenade.

looking out from our balcony

That night Anna cooked up a ripper of a stir-fry whilst I enjoyed some local Lucerne beer and kept her company in the kitchen.  We watched some episodes on the laptop, played a bit of foose-ball with a funny Spanish guy from Bilbao (who we could hardly understand a word that came out of his speedy gonzales mouth) and called it a night.  Guido had a big day of sightseeing planned the next day!

Saturday was a good day to be in Lucerne as there was some sort of festival and nearly every plaza had something going on, generally with one thing in common; cows and food!

We walked around the old town with its medieval ramparts and towers and its 15th century buildings with painted facades, but the most famous area of Lucerne is the river and its bridges.

The Kappelbrucke (Chapel bridge - 1333) was destroyed by a spectacular fire in 1993 and subsequently rebuilt, but the damage is still evident on the pictorial panels under the roof.

We continued walking around town, checking out the various markets, eating free food and taking free drinks where we could, doing a bit of window shopping and just mucking around.  It was lucky that we were only in Lucerne for only 2 nights as although it was a really pretty place, there wasn't a whole lot to do!

Cheap lunches were also hard to come by, so we opted for the quick meals section of the huge coop supermarket that had delicious hot chickens, salads and sausage rolls.  They had free wifi as well, so we sat down, ate our food, followed the footy for a bit and had a chat to Edwina and Nick on Skype.

After lunch we headed up to the Lowendenkmal (Lion Monument). It commemorates the Swiss guards who were massacred in 1792 during the French revolution when revolutionaries stormed the Tuileries Palace in Paris, and is a pretty impressive sight.

American writer Mark Twain praised the mortally wounded lion sculpture as "the most mournful and moving piece of stone in the world"

check out the poser on the left!

There was a really cool bar about half way between the centre of town and our hostel, right on the lake, so we stopped there on the way home for some beers, wine and nibbles.  The sun had come out so it was a perfect spot and we talked about how something like this on Albert Park lake or the Yarra River would kill it!

Anna had pinched some fortune cookies from the coop supermarket and was horrified to find that her fortune told her that she was putting on weight and needed to do some exercise.  Hardly a fortune, more of a harsh criticism.....Anna was not happy haha!

Although it was a Saturday night and mentally I found it hard not to do anything, we really couldn't be bothered doing anything that night, so again we stayed in and cooked a cheap pasta meal and watched a movie.  This was helped by the fact that our hostel was not very busy and the people that were there had the collective personality of a brick wall.

Earlier on, Anna had realised that she had left her Tiffany & Co necklace (which I bought her 3 years ago) in our previous hostel in Bern.  Praise be to god that when Anna nervously called them, they told her they had it for her to come and collect it.

So the next morning we packed our bags and Anna left at about 9:30am to catch the train back to Bern.  I hung around the hostel in Lucerne for a few hours, had some breakfast, did some blogging and had a chat to M & D on Skype who were in Perth on their way to meet us!

I then hopped on a train, and by 2pm I had arrived in basel and half an hour later, Anna arrived from Bern, with necklace in toe (or on neck).

Basel wasn't really a city that we were too interested in seeing, but it made sense to stay here before crossing the border back into France and meeting M & D in Strasbourg, so the afternoon that we arrived we just chilled in the massive common area and waited until we could check-in at 4pm. 

Lonely Planet had suggested a restaurant and although it was a solid 25 minute walk from our hostel, we decided to give it a crack.  Unfortunately and unusually for us (!!), we could not find the damn restaurant anywhere, and after an hour of walking, we gave up and went to the pub for what turned out to be an excellent cottage pie!

Freddie Murcury, Santana, Michael Jackson, Bob Marley, Pink and Tina Turner....just to name a few!

We (especially me) have come to be fascinated by the many street art murals that we have come across on our Europe adventure so far and this one had to be the best of them all.  The wall was around 30m long by 25m high and contained so many famous musicians, it was incredible!

The Rolling Stones were clearly my fav!

Lonely Planet didn't give us a whole lot to do in Basel, so we weren't in any rush the next morning to get out and explore.  I snuck out to the nearest coop supermarket to get some fruit, bread and avocado and we had some awesome avocado and vegemite toast for breakfast, the perfect combination!

We headed out around 11am to see if the city had at least something going for it.  The Basel Bank for International Settlements was an interesting looking building and my imagination ran wild at the amount of dodgy money laundering that would have gone on in there over the years.

Anna thought the trams were really cool, so we hopped on for a short ride and headed down towards the river and the old town.

cool trams

With its cobbled streets and medieval churches, the old town was quite interesting to walk around, but it had nothing on Bern and Lucerne as far as the major Swiss cities went.

view from the terrace of the Munster cathedral

The 12th century Munster cathedral was one of the more interesting churches to walk around because of its position right on the river, but the best looking building in Basel was easily the rust coloured Rathaus (Town Hall) with its frescoed courtyard.

We did half-hearted shopping job, checked out the weirdest and wackiest fountain I have ever seen and Anna had a kebab for late lunch, whilst I didn't eat anything as I was going to the Basel Crossfit later on.

love it!!

I had been in contact with the owner of Basel Crossfit earlier in the week and although he was away on holidays, he told me I was more than welcome to join in for a WOD and that because I was a guest it was free, which was really nice and I'm not sure that would happen in many others around the world, the Swiss are just so damn nice!!

It was about a 3-4km run to get out to Crossfit Basel that was in an old garage out amongst many factories and old buildings, your typical crossfit box I would say.  If I wasn't already warmed up after my run, then the actual warm-up itself basically ruined me before the WOD even started!  Ergo, squats, cleans, dead lifts, dumbbell rows and kettle bell swings were all part of the 20 minute session that absolutely buggered me!

But then came the actual WOD - a 10 minute AMRAP (as many rounds as possible) of 5 thrusters with 16kg kettle bells, 10 32kg kettle bell swings and 30 double unders.  By the end of it I was absolutely screwed and then I still had to run the 3-4km's back home again haha!  Tough work, but thoroughly enjoyable and just made me miss Crossfit St.Kilda all that much more.

I finally got home, just in time to have a quick shower and then we went into the old town to get an interesting take-away meal from this vegetarian joint and then we went and saw the new Bourne movie, which was excellent.

The next day was pretty exciting as it was to be the first time I'd seen M & D since I left in March.  It was hard to get too excited though as we were crossing another border and that meant there was every chance that Anna could get sent home.  We took deep breath's and walked through the imposing doors with 'FRANCE' written above them and to our relief, there was no-one there waiting to catch one of Europe's most wanted illegal travellers haha!