The streets of Paris are silent at 3:30, but at 5:00 the gathering clouds finally crashed with such intensity and light that I jumped up to shut the window just as the skies opened. By the time we walked out to breakfast at eight the clouds were parting and the city was slowly coming to life. As we sat in a little cafe around the corner sipping our coffee, a little girl in new rubber boots was happily hopping through the puddles as her mom laughed.
I will miss it here; even on the worst day it is magical.
The metro was almost empty at 9:25 this Saturday morning, so it was an easy and fast ride to Gare Lyon to board our train to Basel, connecting to Bern. We are on a high speed TVG line, smoothly pushing over 300KMH. We are in wagon 15, seats 115 and 116, in the top section of a double decker car with huge reclining seats, power jacks, big eating trays and elastic book nets, individual lights... in fact it is like flying first class but more comfortable, with room to wander and the café/bar car next to us. But we, like most others, brought our lunches: sandwiches, fruit, water and wine. Gail answers email then falls asleep, I could blog about travel, read my book about travel, or I could just stare out the window and travel, so that is what I do, frittering away my useful "down" time just observing. Now, late at night, I am paying the price.
Things I observed:
The car was mostly silent the entire trip. Marveling how smooth we flowed at 305KMH, how it was a little bumpy when we slowed through villages. Long tunnels through mountains, a beautiful French girl in the front of our car, looking like a better version of Angelina Jolie as she walked past, the guy in the next seat up writing a technical paper on his laptop the whole trip. Hillsides of forests, beautiful, unnamed French villages, each with a cathedral and stone houses, clear blue sky deepening in color as we approached the Swiss border, fields of sunflowers, golden hay, perfect little square plots of trees; most everybody deciding to eat around 13:00 as if that was a pre-agreed upon time for lunch, and so suddenly our silent car turned into a moving café. The train announcements were done in French, German and English; I had fun seeing if I could translate the message correctly prior to the English version. The fastest I happened to notice the train moving was 320 (199 mph) which is the fastest I've ever gone. We switched trains in Basel, to an older regional train for the fifty minute trip to Bern. We had five minutes to make the connection: lucky us, we came in on track nine, and our train was next door on track ten. They say the Swiss trains are prompt, we had time to get on, find a seat, stow the luggage and we were off.
So we got into Bern, the capital of Switzerland, at 14:30. It took us ten minutes to walk to our guesthouse, right outside the old city, by the river. German is the primary language here, which makes it really easy to communicate, though I find myself throwing the occasional "Merci" in by mistake. It's blazing hot here, and it felt good to change into shorts for our walk across the bridge, into the city.
Old city Bern sits on a U bend peninsula of the Aare River, a smart location in the 1100s because you only needed to build one wall across the connection to the main land, so to speak, to defend the city. Thus, Switzerland was started, and today there are several bridges across a deep river gorge, holding the clearest, deep blue water. Many people were floating down the river, around the bend, both swimming and in rafts, and there is a park and walkway all along the river side, people out sleeping in the sun or shade. Maybe tomorrow, if it's hot enough, maybe I can talk Gail into swimming in the cool water. The air is so clear you can see the high peaks near the Bernese Oberland, the Jungfrau, Eiger and Mönch, still covered in snow. We will be there in two days, near Interlaken.
The main street in Bern is being repaved with cobblestones, and the utilities buried, which will look great next year. For this year it looks a little torn up, and makes it a little inconvenient to get through two blocks, but really, big deal. It's interesting how they actually hooked the old buildings' plumbing, electrical and water into temporary pipes running on scaffolding about eight feet above ground.
There are a dozen or more brightly decorated fountains, columns with painted figures on top. One of the most photographed is the Bernese Bear holding a flag, but the one I think is best is the Ogre, eating a bad child, another clutched screaming in his hand. You just gotta laugh. Good thing you can drink from the many fountains that decorate the city, piping in fresh, cold water from the Alps, because I was sweating out gallons.
The light green tinted sandstone (?) buildings are decorated with flags, the Swiss red and white, and the Bernese Bear flag for the Canton. When you look down the street, you think the buildings lining it are all flat, with no stores or anything. That's because the stores are all tucked back, and the sidewalks are covered walkways that run inside stone arches, kind of a city-long, covered portico. Nice shade on a sunny day, good shelter in a snowy winter.
The very odd thing about Bern, however, that really struck us, is how quiet it is. The streets are practically empty of cars, the electric trams are new and run silent, the buses quiet with no diesel spew, and with the pedestrians walking the porticos, the city appears almost empty, asleep. It is very peaceful here.
We had one problem right up front, we needed to get to an ATM for some cash, as we are now on Swiss Francs (CHF) instead of Euros. One CHF is about a buck eight in US dollars, so it's a pretty easy conversion to do when shopping or eating; I just roughly figure it is the same as a dollar. We found an ATM and I got out $400CHF, but would't you know that the machine gave me four, one hundred franc bills. Our problem was this: we were thirsty and wanted a bottle of water. This is where American values and habits interfere with travel; think about walking into a 7-11 and getting a $1.09 bottle of water and paying for it with a hundred dollar bill. At least where I live, most places won't even accept anything over a fifty any more, and they glare at you. Well, I was not in so much trouble, I just cupped my hands and drank the cool water from a fountain. Not Gail. We finally walked into a store, got a $0.90 bottle of water, and I cringed pulling out the hundred... No problem at all. You'd think I gave them correct change. Still, at beer:thirty in the square, then at dinner, I took the opportunity to break the hundreds down into tens, twenties and some change.
We didn't eat much at dinner, I had a small gnocchi, Gail a salad, and one glass of wine each (white for her, red for me) but we consumed prodigious amounts of water. We walked till dark, then turned in, watching BBC, and catching up on emails and blogging.