Berne

We arrived in Zurich at 8:30am and quickly caught a train to Berne.  The whole process and train ride went a little faster than we expected so we had a few hours to explore before the Johnsons would meet us there.  The train ride was beautiful, but we were pretty tired.  Chris slept for part of it, while I took pictures that didn’t really turn out.  Our first order of business was to locate lockers for our luggage so we could be free to explore the city.  When we didn’t find any in the small train station we arrived in, we started to get a little worried.    Thank goodness most people speak at least a little English and we managed our way to the main train station, stored our luggage and were on our way.  Berne is a beautiful city, clean, quaint and modern, and full of flowers.  We wandered through the market, grabbed a couple of baguette sandwiches and watched a little bit of a beach volleyball tournament that was happening just in front of the parliament building.  Then we walked out and saw the view of the lower city and River Aare, walked across the bridge to the Einstein Museum and back and then over to the old clock tower.  Hot, still sleepy, and now tired of walking, we decided to head down to the river and a huge park we had seen from the bridge.  We found a little spot of shade in the park in an area with the least nudity and relaxed for a bit.  That’s when the Johnsons called and we hiked our way back up to meet them.

Then we did the whole tour again with Rick Steves guiding us on the exact walk we had just wandered.  This time we got the commentary though.  We continued on down to the 15th century Gothic cathedral, the Munster, and climbed the stairs to the top for a gorgeous view and then down to the bear pits in the Old Town section.   We even saw some bridge jumpers flipping into the fast-moving, deep turquoise river Aare.  It looked so cool and refreshing, we wanted to join them. 

 

 

We headed back to the cars and finished our journey to our very own 400-year-old farm house in the quaint little village of Sankt Stephans.   I’m not really sure how to describe this little treasure.  We expected that we would be “roughing it”, but this cabin exceeded our expectations.  Every doorframe was raised and I tripped on every one every day.  The ceilings were so low that Chris had to do this funny duck and high step move to get into the next room. The lighting was dim, but we had electricity.  Fortunately, we didn’t need extra heat, but incase we did, the wood chopping station was located in the house not too far from the stove.  It seemed that when this farmhouse was built, it started as a one-room house and they just added on as needed.    That’s why we had windows from the kitchen to the hallway.  The front door didn’t even latch.   It just swung open and closed at will.  Fortunately, Chris Johnson devised a fool proof security system by placing his suitcase in front of the door thus preventing Swiss axe murderers from entering in the night, grabbing the axe that was already in the house and some how making it anywhere in the house without everyone waking up to the creaky, creaky floor boards. The best find in the whole house, though, was a trap door from the kid’s room upstairs to the living room on the main level.  They preferred this to the stairs and were constantly climbing up on the ceramic room heater to access it.  We laughed all night about the house, but by the end of the next night, it had grown on us all.   It was our cozy 400-year-old farmhouse.   Chris, Lisa, and Ryan taught us Dominion and we were addicted by the end of the first game.  Chris and I were past our tiredness that night, so we played well into the night. 

Lisa took some great shots inside our little home.