After flying into GVA, we took the train to Bern where we spent the afternoon walking through the historic city and had lunch. We visited two Christmas markets, two churches, and saw a bear! In the early evening, we continued by train to Interlaken where we checked in to the Essential by Dorint for a four night stay.
Arrival
We departed from EWR in the evening on a 767-300, flying on United Airlines. I was able to snap a few photos of the airport, Lower Manhattan, and Midtown after we turned to the north after taking off to the south.
Time to sleep!
The sky was overcast as we approached GVA. On the descent, we could see the glow of sunrise as well as some mountains. The tallest one is likely Mont Blanc, the tallest mountain in Western Europe.
After landing, we picked up our checked luggage and boarded a SBB train to Bern. There are various different ticket options that are available. We had a Swiss Half Fare Card which, as the name suggests, reduces most public transportation fares by 50% and provides various discounts on other purely tourist related transportation systems as well. For this trip, we simply bought one way tickets from GVA to Bern.
Bern
After arriving in Bern, we dropped off our luggage in a storage locker. It took awhile to locate the lockers as they were on the upper floor of the station building.
Once outside, we saw this odd sculpture that looks a bit like someone welded some random metal parts together.
There is a large bus and tram area on the east side of the station.
Bern’s historic city center, the Old City, is on a hill above a curve in the river Aare. This part of the city is a UNESCO World Heritage site. We started to walk to the east along the Spitalgasse. We noticed a fountain in the middle of the street between the tram tracks. This fountain is the Pfeiferbrunnen.
This tower with clock is the Käfigturm. This tower was originally a defensive structure but eventually was used as a prison. This is not the original tower though. The original was built in 1256 and replaced with this one in 1641. It is still very old!
We came across a Christmas market here by the tower. The market just started for the season yesterday!
We walked through the market before continuing on our way. Here, on the other side of the Käfigturm, the Spitalgasse turns into the Marktgasse. The fountain, of which only the column is visible here, is the Anna-Seiler-Brunnen.
We were a bit hungry so got a wurst embedded in bread from a roadside stand.
Quite a few of the buildings here are decorated in various ways, often colorful.
This fountain, featuring a shooter and a bear, is the Schützenbrunnen.
The next major intersection contains the Zytglogge, a clock tower from the 13th century.
We turned left at the Zytglogge to walk north. We came across this fountain, the Kindlifresserbrunnen. It depicts an ogre eating children. According to Wikipedia, there are various theories about what this fountain is supposed to represent.
A bit further to the north, we came across a colorful giraffe.
The giraffe is in front of the Bühnen Bern, the city theatre.
A bridge crosses over the Aare just to the north of the theatre. We went half way just to take a look at the view to the west.
We turned around to return to the middle of the Old City area, passing by this little plaza on our way. It seemed like it was in the process of being set up as a little Christmas market area.
We returned to the intersection containing the Zytglogge. The tram lines turn away from the main road through the Old City here, leaving the road to the east for cars, busses, and pedestrians. The road also changes names here and becomes the Kramgasse.
We noticed this mural on the side of a building. It utilizes the protruding awning-like structure above the people. There is even a cat standing on it!
Another mural featuring what looks like a knight and a bear.
The Zytglogge, as seen from the east.
We saw this building with the label Confection Lingerie on the archway. This might be French for something like Lingerie Factory? The art on the building’s roof’s overhang is also interesting.
This next fountain is the Zähringerbrunnen. It is a little surprising that all of these so far have had English Wikipedia pages! This statue features a bear in armor as well as a bear cub. It is supposed to be a memorial to Berthold V von Zähringer (Berthold, the 5th Duke of Zähringen), the founder of Bern. A legend says that von Zähringer was searching for a good place to found a city when he shot a bear here. The bear was the first animal to be killed here and thus the source of the city’s name. Seems to be a bit questionable.
The narrow building here is the Einstein Haus. This building, where Einstein lived for 7 years, is currently a museum. The museum’s website states that “during his time in Bern Einstein, in a few years, rose from a scientific nobody to one the most influential scientists of his time.”
This fountain is the Simsonbrunnen. It features a man trying to do dentistry on a lion. No? OK, apparently this illustrates the biblical story of Samson killing a lion.
This decorative statue seemed a bit out of place. It has been a bit hard to research in English. It seems that this statue depicts a “Moor“, a historical European term that seems to mean Muslims from North Africa or certain parts of Europe. This particular statue was a symbol of the Zunft zum Mohren (Moors’ Guild) in Bern, which is the tailors’ guild. They have just rebranded in 2023 to be simply the Zunft zur Schneidern (Tailors’ Guild) to remove the racist connotations of their previous name and symbol.
The fountain here is the Kreuzgassbrunnen. Unlike the other fountains we’ve seen so far, it only has a German language Wikipedia page. It also doesn’t have a person or animal up top.
One interesting aspect of this street is that water runs down the middle of the road underneath the grate that is visible here. This fountain is described as providing drinking water. Its possible the water below is all for drainage?
The water runs under the road from the beginning of the Kramgasse by the Zytglogge and continues to the east. It stops being visible after around 400 meters or so.
There is significantly less road traffic in Switzerland compared to the US as the Swiss have a highly effective transit system, particularly in their cities. Here in this section of Bern’s Old City, there are very few cars. We ended up mostly walking down the middle of the street atop this grated waterway as it provided the best visibility to see buildings on both sides. We were careful to give busses and cars room if they needed it. In general, the rules of common sense apply here.
This statue depicts a monkey holding a flag. This one is the symbol of the Zunftgesellschaft zum Affen (Monkeys’ Guild), which is the guild for stonemasons. Supposedly the secret society of Freemasons originated from these sorts of local stonemasons’ guilds. The explanation for the monkey is that the guild house was already called the Haus zum Affen (Monkeys’ House) when it was acquired by the guild.
This statue is for the Gesellschaft zu Zimmerleuten (Society of Carpenters), the Carpenters’ Guild.
This next sculpture represents the Zunft zu Webern (Weavers’ Guild). Their symbol is the vogel gryf. This creature is a Griffin in English. As for the German, vogel is German for bird. It isn’t clear what gryf means by itself in German, however, we do have Gryffindor with their lion logo so that’s got to count for something! Although lion translates to löwe or löwin in German. Bird lion would be a sensible translation for griffin. Maybe someone who actually speaks German can explain the etymology of vogel gryf!
Anyway, this is a pretty cool mascot.
The next fountain is the Gerechtigkeitsbrunnen. The statue atop the column depicts a blindfolded Lady Justice. Wikipedia explains that the use of a blindfold originally was meant to indicate that justice is blind to all the injustice that goes on, however, this has been reinterpreted like the English phrase, justice is blind. Wikipedia goes on to explain that this statue is the first known representation of a blinded Lady Justice.
Next, we have a frog with shield. A probably poisonous frog based on its appearance. This doesn’t seem to be a guild symbol.
The street had been gradually descending more or less in a straight line. Up ahead, it curves a bit and the grated waterway in the middle dissapears.
As we continued to walk down the street, the both sides descend somewhat steeply. We are essentially on a ridgeline here.
As we continue to the east, we pass by a church to the north and buildings and a road below.
Soon, we cross a bridge relatively high above the Aare, though not as high as the bridge we walked onto earlier.
As we cross the street, going from the north to the south, we see a tightrope walking bear above! A tightrope walking bear may seem odd, but this is Bern!
And, this is Bern’s Bear Pit! Bears were first housed here in 1515, though this area, described as a moat, was used since 1857 to house bears.1
This is the only bear we saw though as the bears are currently hibernating.
We decided to walk a bit to the south high up above the Aare to get a different perspective of the Old City, now to our right or west.
We were extremely surprised to see a bear below! It looked like it was a park down there for people but no, it is a park for the bears! This section is connected to the Bear Pit and is described as the BearPark (even the German untypically capitalizes it this way, as BärenPark).
There are three bears that reside here – Björk, Finn and Ursina.
We never really got a better view of this bear due to the foliage getting in the way. It seemed to be interested in something on the ground and was sniffing here and there and occasionally seemed like it was eating.
We decided to eat at the Altes Tramdepot (Old Tram Depot) which is right by the BearPark. We saw this sculpture sitting on a bench. Who is this guy? It turns out that he is a young Albert Einstein! Einstein was in his 20s when he lived here in Bern. He looked like just a regular guy! No crazy hair like he is typically depicted in the US.
Although it wasn’t busy outside, the Altes Tramdepot was pretty busy inside! The entrance queuing is a bit confusing. There was a short line of people so we got onto the end of the line. It turns out that this slow moving line is for people with reservations. There is a separate line for walk ins to the left. This doesn’t seem to be labelled anywhere.
We ordered a sampler of their beers which includes: Helles (“Lean, pleasant lager with a fine hop bouquet”), Märzen (“Malty, aromatic, amber-coloured special beer with subtle Carmel notes”), Weizen (“Bavarian wheat beer with intense banana and clove aroma”), & 2 Brewer’s Tap. I’m sure they told us at the time what the two brewer’s tap ones were.
We ordered the braised beef cheeks and a rosti. It was a great first meal of the trip!
After lunch, we headed back out. We briefly looked around for the bear but failed to spot it. We crossed the bridge to return to the central Old City area, walking along the south side of the road this time.
We decided to go take a look at the church that we saw on the north side of the road earlier. The church is below grade compared to the road as the road is on a ridgeline above it. These four plaques (there’s possibly a more correct term) were on the side of the retaining wall for the road. The plaques are in honor of Berthold V, founder of Bern, and the same person honored by the Zähringerbrunnen which we passed by earlier.
This statue is presumably of him with a bear.
We went into the church via this door.
This small church is the Nydeggkirche. It has gone through many changes over the years but the building seems to have been originally built around 1344.2
We were able to go upstairs and see the keyboard for the organ. This is pretty unusual in our experience as typically it isn’t possible to access these areas of a church as a regular visitor.
The view from the organ is pretty decent!
After leaving the church, we returned to the main road and quickly took a side road to the south, the Junkerngasse. We followed this road to the west where it runs parallel to the main road that we were on. Our destination is the Berner Münster, located in the middle of the Old City and the largest church in Switzerland!
Many of the buildings in the old city have these arcade passageways on the ground floor. The outside of these arcades is flush with the building’s facade.
This building has a wide mural on the front depicting a variety of people.
We came across a fountain in the middle of the road with a sculpture of a lion with spear and shield on top. It is the Junkerngassbrunnen, the only fountain on the Junkerngasse. There doesn’t seem to be much about this fountain other than the shield bearing the coat of arms of Bubenberg. The only Bubenberg that comes up is Adrian von Bubenberg.
This building’s facade as well as the underside of its overhanging roof are quite well decorated.
Our destination, the Berner Münster, is ahead!
This little fountain is being fed by a bird. The German inscription is a bit hard to read but seems to refer to Heinrich Philipp Loesch, a shoemaker, as the patron of Bern’s fountains. And indeed, his German language Wikipedia page says that his heir was designated as the city of Bern with the funds to be used to maintain the city’s fountains. It also says that this specific fountain was created in 1927 and designed by Karl Indermühle.
A slight detour before visiting the cathedral! There is a good sized plaza, the Münsterplattform, described in English as the Minster Terrace, that sits to the south of the building. It is built atop a stone platform above the hillside. This was the view to the east. The BärenPark is at center in the distance.
To the south, we could see the river Aare flowing by. The long and narrow structure in the river is the Matteschwelle, a dam that has been around in some form since at least the 13th century.
To the west, there is a large bridge that crosses over the Aare. This bridge is on the south side of the Old City. The bridge that we walked onto earlier is on the north side.
This plaza looks like it should be pretty pleasant in seasons that are not winter!
We walked over to the front of the Berner Münster. The decorations above the entrance doors here are quite elaborate! There are 294 individual figures here in this scene which depicts the Last Judgement. The cathedral’s website has a good description of these figures in the Hauptportal section as well as the English language Wikipedia page in the Last Judgement section.
We entered the cathedral via a door to the north. Inside, there was some renovation activity going on which resulted in the ceiling not being visible.
We walked around the interior of the cathedral.
The stained glass windows at the eastern end are particularly spectacular!
The ceiling of the eastern half of the cathedral was visible. There are figures where each of the lines intersect.
This organ, a wind dynamic organ, was some sort of research project.
After we exited, we heard the sound of the church’s bells coming from above.
Listen to the sound!
There was a small Christmas market in front of the cathedral.
This fountain was at the edge of the market. It is the Mosesbrunnen, The red blindfold seems to have been added. There is also a sign affixed to the statue.
This fountain, on the side of a library building two blocks to the west of the cathedral, seems to be a merman spitting out water.
We turned to the left to cross over the Kirchenfeldbrücke, the bridge that we saw earlier from the Münsterplattform.
We walked to the south on the bridge’s east side. It offered a pretty good view of the Aare and the Old City. The stone structure below the Münsterplattform is clearly visible from this perspective. This does raise the question, is there anything inside?
We originally weren’t going to continue all the way across the bridge but decided to do so. This monument is directly to the south of the bridge, with the roadway dividing into left and right forks in front of it.
The monument is the Welttelegrafen-Denkmal (World Telegraph Monument). It celebrates the founding of the ITU, the global standards body for telecommunications, in 1865. The plaque here lists the members of the ITU in 1965. The monument was created in 1922 so this plaque is not original.
This castle-like building behind the monument, which looks like it could be something of an urban Hogwarts, is the Bern History Museum. The museum also contains the Einstein Museum.
We returned to the Old City via the Kirchenfeldbrücke’s west side. The green domed building is the Bundeshaus, the Swiss Parliament Building.
We decided to walk to the Bundeshaus. This bear was on the west side of the north end of the bridge.
We passed by this red lion sculpture on a building. It represents the Mittellowen (Middle Lion) tanners’ guild. The story presented on the above linked website is that there were two tanners’ houses. A third one was created in the middle, thus, the name.
It wasn’t particularly busy at the Bundeshaus, though it seems like a somewhat popular photo spot.
This column, to the north of the Bundeshaus, is the top part of the Bärenplatzbrunnen. Depending on the angle you view it from, it may seem a bit… odd… The sculpture is described as a mercenary and a bear.
We returned to the train station to get our bags and take the train to our next destination, Interlaken! Generally speaking, going from Geneva to Interlaken requires changing trains at Bern so this happened to be a pretty convenient place to visit today! We’ve actually been here at this station multiple times but this was our first time leaving it.
Interlaken
After arriving at Interlaken West, we walked to our hotel, the Essential by Dorint, a German hotel chain. The hotel is conveniently located at the southern end of the station’s eastern platform.
It was pretty hard to decide where to stay in Interlaken. The city is a huge tourist destination and thus tends to be very busy and expensive. Although we’ve been to Interlaken before, we’ve never stayed here. We chose the Essential as it has a great location, is new, having opened in May, and isn’t overly expensive.
One thing to realize about this property is that it seems to include standard hotel rooms and apartment rooms. We booked a standard hotel room but got upgraded to an apartment room. The apartment rooms are in the same building but can only be accessed by a separate entrance. Also, while breakfast may be included in standard rooms, it seems that it is not with apartment rooms. We had purchased breakfast with our room. It took a bit of discussion with the front desk as well as showing the reservation to acknowledge that breakfast should be included with our stay. Also, as the apartments have a separate entrance from the remainder of the hotel, that means going to the hotel’s breakfast requires going outside. Overall, none of the above was a big deal, but something to be aware of as a guest.
In the US, we’d probably refer to this as a suite with full kitchen. In Australia, this would probably be something like a serviced apartment. Everything was, of course, new. Many of the appliances were Swiss, though there is a Sharp toaster oven on the counter.
The biggest annoyance in this room is the spiky light fixture above the table. It is at the exact height to poke you in the eye if you lean over the table and don’t realize that the light is there. It got me multiple times, though thankfully never exactly in the eye. Terrible!
The bed overall is probably Queen sized, though it is the European style where its two small beds placed next to each other. There is a tablet on the side of the bed which didn’t seem to do anything useful.
Unfortunately, the apartment did not have a tub even though there is ample room to have had one. At least the bathroom was modern styled! That is something that seems pretty rare in Interlaken as most hotels are best described as being older.
The front desk provided us with a map of Interlaken. We’re not planning on really doing anything in the town of Interlaken during this trip as it is mostly a convenient and well connected place to stay.
We also received the town’s Tips for Rainy Days pamphlet. Our tip for a rainy day? Waterproof clothing!
The apartment had a small outdoor patio space. It isn’t a balcony as it does not extrude from the building’s exterior. It has a view of the Interlaken West train station below. So far, noise from passing trains has not been an issue. As it was already past sunset when we arrived, we couldn’t really see the state of the mountains above. How much snow is there? We will see tomorrow!
- Bern and bears: https://tierpark-bern.ch/en/bearpark/bern-and-bears/#1637624979076-2d623d33-7808 ↩︎
- Nydeggkirche: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nydeggkirche ↩︎