Our train from Paris took us to Lausanne, where we caught a regional train to Bern. This took us along a scenic route beside some UNESCO listed vineyards from the medieval times –
Medieval vineyards on the hillside
Upon arrival in Bern, our first impression was positive, that was until we arrived at our hotel. The room is very basic, which we already knew from booking online, but the lack of double glazed windows means a lot of street noise comes into our room at night, making it hard to sleep. The bathroom is in need of a renovation (and better ventilation) and our room had a very strong smell of stale smoke (this hotel unfortunately has a couple of rooms which guest are allowed to smoke in). The smell was semi-fixed by opening the windows for fresh air and the purchase of a odour neutralise box thingy. The lack of free WiFi Internet access at the hotel was also annoying. There is 1 Internet kiosk in the lobby that we can use, but the computer is probably about 6 yrs old and doesn’t handle viewing more than 3-4 tabs in Chrome at a time. There is WiFi all throughout the building but it’s a Swisscom Public Wifi Hotspot, so in order for us to use it, we needed to purchase access through Swisscom. After much deliberation, we decided it was going to be difficult and impracticable to not have access to the Internet for 6 nights, especially as we needed to look up things to do in Genevia, Zurich and booking a hotel in Italy, so we ended up purchasing a 30hrs voucher for CHF45, which is about AUD$50 (very expensive for Internet access)
Once we left the hotel, Bern presented us with a brief sunny spell in which to explore the city. The official language of Bern is German, although I suspect most people would speak English as well as a 3rd language (Switzerland has 4 official languages – French, Italian, German and Romansh)
As I write this, I’m currently sitting in a self-service laundry just 5 mins outside Bern City Centre, waiting for our clothes to tumble dry. Out of all the self-service laundries we’ve used so far, this has been one of the easiest. There are instructions in English, machines look in good condition, and you simply put your detergent in, insert the coins and press go. It was convenient to get to via trolley-bus from the city and is right next door to a cafe (which has free WiFi)
The Laundromat is called JetWash
As Switzerland , doesn’t use the Euro, we had to work out another set of coins, and here all their coins from the 10cents to the 5 Fr coins are all silver, except for the 5cent coin which is golden in colour. Consequentially, it makes it a lot harder to work out how much money you have, especially when the ½ fr coin (eg 50 cents) is smaller than the 20/10 cent coins. On the plus side, it appears my card works here with the PIN, so this should make things easier.
(NOTE: Just to clarify, our cards have worked everywhere we’ve gone so far, but not all countries will let us use our PIN, eg UK, Paris required us to sign, whereas Switzerland, Sweden, Copenhagen all allowed us to use our PIN. This doesn’t make use stand out as much, as all European use PINs with their cards these days.)
We’ll be visiting Zurich, Geneva and Jungfraujoch whilst we’re here in Switzerland as we got a Swiss Eurail Pass and the train network here is very extensive, reliable and efficient.
Cheerio, Auf Wiedersehen, Au Revoir, Ciao, Chau
That bear park was very sad 🙁