Statue of town founder and a bear

The bear theme has been going on for a while here in Bern!

(Statue on Bärenplatz)

The bear pits of Bern

Well, I don't like them much... but here's one half of the bear pits in Bern, with a bear to be seen.

I wouldn't feel very good about having something like this in my home town, but visitors certainly do seem to love it.

As you can probably imagine, the bearpits are the focus of a lot of debate here. But I don't want to politicise on this blog, so enough already.

Take a look at this picture for another snippet of info on the Bern bear pits.

Bern win ice hockey - home game

Here is "SCB" beating Geneva Servettes 3-2 in the Bern "Eishalle" Stadium (...the "ice hall")

Bern City Hall (Rathaus)

I'd like to draw your attention to the mural on the wall inside the Bern Rathaus.

It depicts the men of Bern labouring to build their city stone by stone. A mother can be seen on the right hand side with two children, and the city's symbol, the bear, can be seen strolling like a giant teddy bear amongst the townspeople. Clearly this mural is supposed to inspire city councillers and to remind them of who they are serving and what they are working towards.

Rathaus translates as Council House.

Please excuse my dodgy panorama-stitch in the photo.

Here's a picture of the outside of the Rathaus.

Any which way

City centre milk urns

These milk containers are embedded in the concrete in front of the main station. I'm not sure what it's supposed to mean...

Bern blogger This said, in a comment to this post, that it's an art installation by Ueli Berger called "Hommage to Milk Lane". The canisters embedded in the asphalt mark the location of a small street called Milchgässli. Milk Lane was done away with when the railway station was upgraded. And according to a German-language newspaper article, it was the place where people were picked up and dropped off. Thanks, This, interesting explanation - I thought it was just random.

Winter in Bern

Better late than never...

Finally it has snowed! The ski resorts are delighted and there have been car crashes all over the place. Here is Marktgasse this afternoon.

Waiting for the tram

I spend a lot of time here..

La baguette fédérale

On Parliament Square

View from Grosse Schanze park

Crisp but not cold, these students (and an old man) take in the view of the Jungfrau massif from the Grosse Schanze park.

Climbing out of the river?

brrr...

Where's the snow?

It's cold and grey, but the snow still hasn't come... The newspapers today said it's been the most snow-less winter on record. Bad news in a country that depends so heavily on ski tourism.

PS new camera!

Short break

Dear visitors, I'm sorry to report that my camera is broken so there will be a break here until I get something worked out... Enjoy the rest of the site in the meantime.

Heavy lifting

Click on the image to see this properly!

I've posted this really as a pointer to a fantastic pic I saw on Flickr, which is a great shot in terms of technical aspects, image quality and photo content. Mine pales in comparison really. Please do take a look. Respect to Beegee.

Church of the Holy Spirit

This is the baroque ceiling of the catholic Heiliggeistkirche opposite the train station in Bern. This pic here shows it from the outside.

Cathedral interior

Bern has an impressive gothic cathedral, known as the Munster.



Here here and here are shots of the cathedral exterior and
this pic shows the cathedral on the Bernese skyline. Awesome.

A hazy view to Parliament

Tucked away

Like cheese?

Try the Bündner Alphüsli cheese stand on the marketplace -



A Bündner is a product or person from the eastern Swiss Canton of Graubünden, known in French and English as the Grison mountains. Amongst other things, the Grisons are famous for the Davos and St. Moritz ski resorts. Not to mention the cheese, of course. And the sausage. And the pear rolls, stacked up on the left! Alphüsli is a real Swiss word and means little alpine house - I guess refering to the chalet-esque (sort of) stall...

You might like this other shot of the back of the market square, just behind the Bünder Alphüsli

Brunngasse

This photo of Brunngasse (Fountain Street) reminds me of the 'middle-age fortress' feeling that Bern evokes. Inside the city walls, it's a quiet, safe place that time forgot. The rural surrounding countryside adds a buffer-zone to the fortress - it's at least an hour's drive north, east or west before you reach modern European civilization. And if you travel further south into the Alps, time slows down and eventually even starts to go backwards...

Clear view to the Alps at sunset

Last night was a good one. Cold air = good views

Bern sunset

Tonight's sunset from the Murihalden...the same place as this daytime panorama and this stop on Ted's tour

Pyrenées

According to this webpage, Café des Pyrénées, Kornhausplatz 17, is "jovial and unpretentious meeting place for artists, alcoholics and others with loud voices. Equal quantities of twenty- and forty-somethings crowd the place out nightly."

This pic is dedicated to the guilty parties who definitely know who they are.

How many bus drivers does it take to change a bulb?

Well, I can't think of a funny answer, but here's a guy from the local bus company, Bernmobil, doing just that.

Very cold day panorama!

A view of the 180-degree twist in the River Aare loop
(see this post for more info)

View from Kleine Schanze

That's the classic Alps view of Eiger, Mönch and Jungfrau, taken in the Kleine Schanze park just beside the Swiss parliament.

Coincidentally I took an almost identical picture at the same place, same time, last year, click here to take a look.

180° panorama over Bern

This is the view over Bern and the River Aare from the Muristalden, or the "Muri hill", a steep road which in the old days was the main route to the village of Muri.

It has been mooted that the park will one day be transformed into a roaming area for the symbols of Bern, the bears. At present the bears are kept in an ugly and insufficient stone pit close by.

Autumn streets of Berne

Buskers Bern

Buskers Bern is a three-day long street music festival in Berne. The "buskers" are from round the globe and are mostly excellent.

Here's a snapshot of a Brazilian trio that reminded me of Manu Chao.

Last night was spoiled by rain but tonight looks ok. www.buskersbern.ch

Gurten Festival / T-Shirt

The Gurten is what the Swiss call Bern's "Haus-berg", meaning Bern's "home mountain".

It's a mound at the back side of the city and every summer for the last thirty years or so, the Gurten has hosted the Gurten Festival, an imaginatively named music festival. It's a mix of big acts and local heroes, and is small and friendly rather than huge and muddy, which many of the festivals back home seem to be. We had great weather this year and I saw Manu Chao and Mousse T headline the fourth and last night. Awesome. Reamonn are playing in the photo above, a German group with an Irish frontman (they sounded like U2). More on www.gurtenfestival.ch/

Bern from the air

I was lucky enough to be on a flight last week that flew over Bern at low altitude - the sky was clear and I was able to capture this view, showing Bern, the alpine foothills and the Bernese Oberland alps, as well as the snaking loop of river Aare in the bottom right hand corner. By following the river round to the loop, you can pick out the medieval part of Bern (compare with this post). The pic is looking due south.

It's a little blurry, i hardly ever get sharp ground pics from the air because of the high speed of flight and the relative tinyness of the subject, grateful for any tips..

Some shots from a cruise on Lake Thun

So I know this is the Bern City blog but sometimes you need to get out of the city!

Lake Thun at Spiez

It may have been Ted's last photo, but not mine...

Here's a picture of Lake Thun, very close to Berne. It's taken over the small town of Spiez, and there's a castle by the lakeside, visible if you click on the pic for the large version. Awesome place in summer, awesome place in winter :)

Ted On Tour 4

this is the last one. the high point of ted's tour.

Ted On Tour 3

Ted On Tour 2

Ted's pics form part of a set of photos that I took as part of my job (on lunchbreak...). Ted's pics were for his owner, a geography class at a school in the south of England, who follow his adventures round the world and get to see some interesting places he visits.

The very British teddy bear has a distinguished travel history, having been seen in Spain, New Zealand, South America and more!

Ted On Tour 1

Bundesplatz / Place de la Federation

270° panorama yesterday afternoon. Looks best blown up big (click on the picture).

The wet patch in the middle is not due to rain, it's because I took the photo while the fountain display, where jets shoot from nozzles in the stone (which is made of alpine gneis rock), was on one of its intermittent breaks.

Take a look at this post to see the fountain (almost) in action!

Chillin' on the Münsterplatform

coffees and beers, with a view to the Gurten Hill

many happy kids playing in the park

parklife

Saturday shoppers on Marktgasse

The busier end of Bern's main street this afernoon.

The main street changes names three times as it runs through the town centre: Marktgasse - Kramgasse - Gerechtigkeitsgasse = Market Street - Kram (?) Street - Justice Street.

Friday on Kramgasse

A typical Friday afternoon at the quieter end of Bern's main thoroughfare.

At some point in history someone famous (perhaps Goethe?) called this street the most beautiful in the world. Well, at that time the world was a much smaller place than it is today, but there's no denying that there's nowhere else quite like it, and it is very cool in its own medieval way. Walking under the arches is almost like being in a time machine. A very unique and atmospheric street.

Here's a favourite photo of the same stretch on a very cold and quiet day.

Who pulled the plug?

This is one of my favourite fountains in Berne. There are many others, and you can drink from all of them, the water is very clean. Most town fountains have columns in the middle of their basins, with statues atop the columns. There is a string of them in a relatively straight line connected by an age-old underground stream running down the middle of the main street through the town (can be seen here covered by a grille). This particular spouter is by the university library in the town centre, at the head Münstergasse. I've got this photo of it full, very classy.

Bern on Google Earth

Bern is a small place, and many people don't immediately know where it is - Geneva and Zurich steal the Swiss limelight. So I thought I would pull a few images off Google Earth to give you a better idea where I've been posting from.



On the European scale, Switzerland is the north-south east-west axis of what politicians call 'old' Europe, which goes a long way toward explaining the international role such a small country plays in Europe and the world. You can see that Bern is more or less in the centre of Switzerland - a compromise point between the French, German, Italian and Romansch speaking Swiss, who might all wish for their own regions' major and better-known towns to be the capital.



At the regional level, Bern is situated just north of the Alps on the Swiss plateau, which spans west to east across the northern two-thirds of the country. The remainder of the country is sparesly inhabited Alpine terrain - the majority of the populace lives on the plateau. Lush countryside surrounds the town and the Alps are within easy reach, past the clean blue waters of Lake Thun :-)



Zooming in, we see that Bern really is a very small town. The most prominent geographical features are the River Aare and the Gurten hill south of the town. The core of the Swiss capital is concentrated on the "half-island" (as it's called in German) made by the curve of the River Aare.

For more detail on Bern, take a look at this post where I made some notes on how the town was founded and on the city layout.