Bern

Time has come to tell you a bit more about the second part of my trip to Switzerland. First thing to mention here is Swiss Pass. Basically it's a ticket only tourists can buy that allows you to freely travel around the country with trains and it is also valid for local transport within cities. Mine was valid for four days and I simply shipped it to my friends in Zurich. I didn't have to worry about buying tickets on the stations and it is particularly useful when you have to quickly change between trains. I guess that you can easily buy tickets from the conductor, but I advise to invest in a Swiss Pass and make your life simpler especially when you plan to commute a lot. Equipped with my Swiss Pass I set off to do a trip around the country of the happy cows! First stop after Zurich was Bern, the capital of Switzerland.

The place I really wanted to visit in Bern was Einstein's house. His second floor flat is situated in the city center at Kramgrasse No. 49. Entrance is not free, but if you have a Swiss Pass you get a discount, so that's another reason to have one! As far as I know it also allows you to enter certain museums all around Switzerland for free.

Bern is situated upon the river Aare which makes a nice U-turn around the old town. Some old legend says that the founder of Bern named it after the first animal he met on a hunt and that was, you probably guessed by now, a bear! Highly likely then that's the reason why close to the old town there are bear pits. Don't mistake with beer pits :) One of the best tourist attractions in Bern is the Zyttglogge, but personally I liked Rosengarten the most. These are situated on a small hill just across the river with a stunning view on the city.

You can also get on top of the Berner Munster and I do recommend doing this! The view is fantastic, unfortunately my camera battery was already dead at that point, so I don't have any photos. Actually it was dead earlier as some of you probably already noticed that photos stopped matching the description :(

Now a short story why you should always have a travel insurance! Switzerland is considered to be one of the safest place in the world, but the wind is blowing there too! Why is that important you may ask? Let me explain. I met my Couch Surfing host in a small Cafe close to the train station. We were sitting outside and having a nice chat about different matters when the wind started to blew stronger and a big metal holder standing on a pole right next to where we were sitting fell off and almost hit me in the head! Fortunately the only part of me that suffered was my shoulder, but I tend not to think what if I would get hit with that thing in the head. Ouch! The cafe owner wasn't really concerned and nothing serious happened, so I just let it go. As an act of compassion he took the bill on him. I should have ordered more stuff :P I've secured myself for this trip with the World Nomads travel insurance.

My Couch Surfing host was living outside of Bern, in Bollingen. His hobby were butterflies, so I found out quite a lot about the butterfly surveillance project, sponsored by the Swiss government, he has been working on for the past few months. He even went to Iran to study butterflies. That's what I call commitment :)

When planning the trip I was first pushed off by the fact that I'll be travelling by myself, but now I think that it was a perfect setup, i.e., it meant total freedom when it came to any kind of choice! I didn't feel completely isolated too, because every night I had either an interesting Couch Surfing host that I could talk to and share my experiences from the day or weird people in a hostel to which I could babble about all kind of stuff.