Bern, i.e. Bear!

Here I am in Bern - which is "bear" in ... some language. Hmmm... maybe I should research that before I post this entry? :D Nah...

Today is Sunday. And the shops are closed. And I'm only here for two days. So essentially, I haven't seen much... I was checking out the signs on a couple of the shops yesterday and found out that most of them are closed on Sundays and don't open until 2pm on Monday!! So, since I'm leaving early tomorrow morning, I'm not fancying my chances of doing any shopping here...To tell the truth, I didn't really believe that all the shops would be closed (I'm not sure why...?) - until I hit the town today. Not a soul on the streets! No traffic whatsoever, and I didn't get to see any people for ages. Pretty funny. I could count on one hand the number of cafes/restaurants that were open, too.

Since nothing is open I had a bit of an exciting time trying to find the entrance to the train station this arvo - normally you can kind of get away with following the crowds, but not today. Actually found out that if I'd walked another 10 metres at one point, I would've been right where I wanted, but I turned around, got a little lost and 20 mins later finally found it from the other side. :D I bought my train ticket for paris tomorrow - scary stuff - $117!! ridiculous!! and that was second-class!! can you believe it would´ve been $20 more expensive with stops? Anyway, it´s direct to paris for about 4.5 hours. Bad thing: it leaves at about 8.30am, so I have to be at the train station at about 7.45 (just to make sure) which means I need to leave the hotel at about 7am... hmm... needless to say, I'll be doing my packing and having a shower tonight so that I can kind of fall out of bed...

Now. About Bern. Bern is lovely. For a capital city I'm surprised how small it is - like seriously, you can pretty much walk from one side of the main part to the other in about 20 mins... and not miss anything! It's kind of funny though, 'cos depending where you go, they might speak German, French, Swiss-German or something else that i just have no idea... so pretty much I've been sticking with the German. I've got the whole "Sorry, I can't speak German" down pat, and the "Can you speak English?" works pretty well. I've actually had a few people look at me oddly and then tell me my German is pretty good. Obviously they don´t believe i can´t speak it. :D

Oh! And I stumbled on a market yesterday - funny stuff! I just walked around a corner and *whammo*! There it was! Love that kind of thing. Lots of hippy stuff though, funnily enough, 'cos you don´t see anyone wearing it? Odd.