Adventures in Bern, or, how many phallic symbols can a single city have?



Today was my last day of Swiss sightseeing, at least for now. I went to Bern for the day and had a great time. I started off my visited by going to the Kunsthaus, which I'm happy to say I found without any difficulty. The exhibit, though it had some fantastic pieces, was somewhat disappointing. As the fine arts museum in the capital city I expected a more impressive collection but Zurich's was far superior. Oh well, you win some you lose some. I'm starting to acquire a taste for Picasso at last though. His pieces are a lot more impressive in person.

After the Kunsthaus I struggled a little to find my way to the Museum of Communication. I'm still getting used to the differences in city planning here. There isn't necessarily a street sign at each intersection. I did find it though and it was great. It covered the whole history of human communication, from face to face to the Internet and beyond. There were a lot of really cool displays and some neat interactive stuff. It's too bad there isn't something like this in Vancouver because it would be a great field trip for a CMNS 110 class.

After that I headed back to the train station to begin the walking tour of Bern. The map they give you at the tourist office has a nice blue outline of where the most important sights are. I followed the entire thing, except I skipped the detour to the rose garden. There aren't likely to be many roses yet. First I walked along the main tourist street which has most of the major sights. These include a lot of fountains. The most famous one is the Ogre Fountain which is an ogre eating children. How lovely! I saw the astronomical clock, which has figures that move on the hour and the prison tower. I continued down that street past a church and across the bridge. I climbed up a little hill so I could see some of Bern then checked out the bear bits. That created a mixture of feelings. It was fun to see the bears doing tricks and such but so sad to see them in a 'pit.'

I then headed down a different street, back towards the train station. This took me to the Munster, just in time to get up the spyre before they closed it. It's too bad that a lot of the building is covered in scaffolding but the sculptures on the main entrance are absolutely breathtaking. The view from the top is definitely worth the climb as well. I walked through the Munster grounds and then towards the Swiss parliament buildings. There really wasn't much to see here because most of the building is covered in scaffolding and surrounded by cranes. Then it was back to the train station to give my tired feet a break and head back to Zurich for the night.