Bern 2010-07-21
\nWell,\u00a0 I got here at 8:30am and could not check in for 6 hours\u2026\u00a0 I heard that there was a good walking tour\u00a0 of the town so I asked about it.\u00a0 In the next 6 hours I did lots and lots\u2026\u00a0 I toured the bear pits (sans bears), I visited the rose garden high on the hill.\u00a0 I visited the cathedral and yes at this point, yes, I have seen them all\u2026\u00a0 I visited the parliament and then it caught my eye\u2026\u00a0 the park on the river\u2026\u00a0 I just started walking down and down and down.\u00a0 There were several hectors of sun bathers and lying next to the fast running Aare River.\u00a0 This river had a very fast current.\u00a0 Three times faster than you can walk and it was deep and the banks were steep.\u00a0 It was also a gorgeous green.\u00a0 It flows throughout the city.\u00a0 In fact they redirect it into the city for fountains and other waterways.\u00a0\u00a0 I scoped the thing out.\u00a0 It was a little scary.\u00a0 The sighs that stated that you would die and it\u2019s not our fault come to mind\u2026\u00a0 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\u2026\u00a0 my favorite sign was \u2026\u00a0 last exit 240 meters\u2026\u00a0 not sure what would happen after that\u2026\u00a0 I scoped the whole thing out and then came bad to my small, un-air conditioned hotel room (apparently most are not in Bern\u2026 some research required).\u00a0 I grabbed some money, a towel and my flip-flops and set off on my adventure\u2026.\u00a0 Well I sorely underestimated the taxi fair and determined that I would be walking back\u2026\u00a0 did I write down the name of the hotel? No, did I write down the address, no;\u00a0 did I bring the map, no\u2026 how was a mad with a memory as long as a rabbit\u2019s \u2026 and no directional ability going to find my hotel after thrashing down the mad river\u2026 I decided to see if I survived the river first before I would worry about that\u2026\u00a0 so I took ky towel and my shoes and hid them away like 100\u2019s of others and began the walk up stream.\u00a0 I did not want to go to far.\u00a0 I still had the hotel key in my shorts and 18 franks (very heavy by the way) in my pocket\u2026 I went to a fairly safe point and plunged in\u2026 it was cold\u2026 and it was fast\u2026 all you had to to is tread water and you were flying down the river\u2026 it was really exciting until you go to the point where the exists started\u2026\u00a0 warning, last exit 240 meters\u2026 and after that I am not sure of the fate\u2026 anyway, I chose a fairly conservative exit and managed to hang on\u2026 now when I say hang on, I mean it.\u00a0 When you grab the exit rail your body flies flat out down current and you have to crawl hand-over-hand to the shore.\u00a0 It is a little unnerving until you see 70 year-old women doing it\u2026 anyway it was scary\u2026\u00a0 so I had to do it again\u2026 this time I went further up the river to one of the bridges that crosses the river\u2026 some very ill-behaved people were actually jumping off the bridge into the swirling peril\u2026\u00a0 I did not see any getting hurt hurling themselves 5-6 meters off the bridges so, yes, I did it too\u2026\u00a0 it was a bit of a rush.\u00a0 Not only were you jumping off a bridge into water, but the water was moving at 15 mph\u2026 or so\u2026\u00a0 I lived\u2026\u00a0 my stuff was still there when I got back.\u00a0 I decided that I did not bring enough money get to a ride back to my hotel so my feet paid the price again.\u00a0 There is a hill so steep on the way up that there is a tram that rides up it\u2026 the line was too long\u2026\u00a0 long (yes I know long) story short.\u00a0 I managed to find my hotel.
\nMore later if you can stand it\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Bern 2010-07-21 Well,\u00a0 I got here at 8:30am and could not check in for 6 hours\u2026\u00a0 I heard that there was a good walking tour\u00a0 of the town so I asked about it.\u00a0 In the next 6 hours I did lots and lots\u2026\u00a0 I toured the bear pits (sans bears), I visited the rose garden […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-278","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-europe-2010"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7vq9N-4u","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/whatup.brantct.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/278","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/whatup.brantct.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/whatup.brantct.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/whatup.brantct.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/whatup.brantct.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=278"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/whatup.brantct.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/278\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":280,"href":"https:\/\/whatup.brantct.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/278\/revisions\/280"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/whatup.brantct.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=278"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/whatup.brantct.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=278"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/whatup.brantct.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=278"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}