Bern

Capital of Switzerland. Name means "bear."* Official language is German but main spoken language is Bernese German (there is no written Swiss German, just high German).  Historic Old Town is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Michel and Hedda picked us up from Bienne and drove us to their home in beautiful Morges by way of Bern, where we spent the afternoon and early evening.  The tall buildings of Old Town, with their uniform rooftops and chimneys, seemed packed efficienctly and compactly together.  Looking at Old Town from afar was quite a site.  It seemed like one only needed to cross the curve of the river to take a step back in time. Really quite stunning.  We spent several hours wandering the cute streets and beautiful arcades, enjoying the unique boutiques all along the way.  We also saw the impressive Federal Palace, bustling street market, huge chess game (apparently a common past time in CH), abundance of darling flowers, and much more. We also experienced some delightful homemade hot chocolate at a hotel whose name escapes me.

Following our Bernese adventure, we drove to Morges and enjoyed a scrumptious home-cooked meal in Michel and Hedda's beautiful home.



*To elaborate...from Wikipedia: The etymology of the name Bern is uncertain. According to the local legend, based on folk etymology, Berchtold V, Duke of Zähringen, the founder of the city of Bern, vowed to name the city after the first animal he met on the hunt, and this turned out to be a bear. It has long been considered likely that the city was named after the Italian city of Verona, which at the time was known as Bern in Middle High German. As a result of the find of the Bern zinc tablet in the 1980, it is now more common to assume that the city was named after a pre-existing toponym of celtic origin, possibly *berna "cleft".^[9] The bear was the heraldic animal of the seal and coat of arms of Bern from at least the 1220s. The earliest reference to the keeping of live bears in the Bärengraben dates to the 1440s.