Rick Rambles – A blog

Bern 2010-07-21
Well,  I got here at 8:30am and could not check in for 6 hours…  I heard that there was a good walking tour  of the town so I asked about it.  In the next 6 hours I did lots and lots…  I toured the bear pits (sans bears), I visited the rose garden high on the hill.  I visited the cathedral and yes at this point, yes, I have seen them all…  I visited the parliament and then it caught my eye…  the park on the river…  I just started walking down and down and down.  There were several hectors of sun bathers and lying next to the fast running Aare River.  This river had a very fast current.  Three times faster than you can walk and it was deep and the banks were steep.  It was also a gorgeous green.  It flows throughout the city.  In fact they redirect it into the city for fountains and other waterways.   I scoped the thing out.  It was a little scary.  The sighs that stated that you would die and it’s not our fault come to mind…  but at the same time they provided escape points along the river so that when you were foolish enough to walk two miles up the river and jump in, you would have half a chance to get out…  my favorite sign was …  last exit 240 meters…  not sure what would happen after that…  I scoped the whole thing out and then came bad to my small, un-air conditioned hotel room (apparently most are not in Bern… some research required).  I grabbed some money, a towel and my flip-flops and set off on my adventure….  Well I sorely underestimated the taxi fair and determined that I would be walking back…  did I write down the name of the hotel? No, did I write down the address, no;  did I bring the map, no… how was a mad with a memory as long as a rabbit’s … and no directional ability going to find my hotel after thrashing down the mad river… I decided to see if I survived the river first before I would worry about that…  so I took ky towel and my shoes and hid them away like 100’s of others and began the walk up stream.  I did not want to go to far.  I still had the hotel key in my shorts and 18 franks (very heavy by the way) in my pocket… I went to a fairly safe point and plunged in… it was cold… and it was fast… all you had to to is tread water and you were flying down the river… it was really exciting until you go to the point where the exists started…  warning, last exit 240 meters… and after that I am not sure of the fate… anyway, I chose a fairly conservative exit and managed to hang on… now when I say hang on, I mean it.  When you grab the exit rail your body flies flat out down current and you have to crawl hand-over-hand to the shore.  It is a little unnerving until you see 70 year-old women doing it… anyway it was scary…  so I had to do it again… this time I went further up the river to one of the bridges that crosses the river… some very ill-behaved people were actually jumping off the bridge into the swirling peril…  I did not see any getting hurt hurling themselves 5-6 meters off the bridges so, yes, I did it too…  it was a bit of a rush.  Not only were you jumping off a bridge into water, but the water was moving at 15 mph… or so…  I lived…  my stuff was still there when I got back.  I decided that I did not bring enough money get to a ride back to my hotel so my feet paid the price again.  There is a hill so steep on the way up that there is a tram that rides up it… the line was too long…  long (yes I know long) story short.  I managed to find my hotel.
More later if you can stand it…

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 21st, 2010 at 5:26 pm and is filed under Europe 2010. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.