Visiting Bern

Bern the capital of Switzerland is also a Canton, BE (State). It is about an hour from our town and the language spoken is a Swiss German dialect (totally different from High German). I will not go through the details about it's political info etc., just search it online if you are interested to know more about the place. We decided to take Saturday as our leisure day to stroll the town. First stop is to find our favorite restaurant. Just look at the pictures for the food we chose to eat that day.

Rösti (is made with potatoes, like hashbrown in the US) with bacon and eggs

Spaghetti with Mussels (Mine was with Risotto)

When everyone was happy and energized, we went for a little window shopping while crossing the old town. In between stop was my fascination with the fountains. They are all over the places. Like any of my excursion, i must take photos regardless of what...Just for a bit of information, Bern is also the city known for its fountains. There are probably 100 or more of them in the city and what few i found in the old center town have a very powerful images. Here are some of the fountains.

The Ryfflibrunnen

Brunnen is the German word for fountain. As much as I would like to share the perspective by taking the entire image of the fountain but, obviously failed, I can however give you a measurement of its actual size for the fountain, including statue, column, and basins. Each fountain probably reaches about 15 feet (roughly 4.5 meters) in height, with the statue being nearly life-size.

The Gerechtigkeitsbrunnen (Justice)

Too bad we didn't get a closer shot of him

Here is myself taking a pose with my children with the armor standing guard over the city fountain, and another smaller bear between his legs eating some grapes.

The Simsonbrunnen

This fountain shows the biblical story of Samson and the Lion. Apparently this fountain was paid for by the butcher's guild. It is easy to see why they would chose this image to represent their trade.

The ChindlifresserbrunnenMy favorite although it is a bit graphic and all, the Chindlifresserbrunnen (Child-Eating-Ogre-Fountain). The Chindlifresser is kind of like the Swiss boogey-man. I was a bit afraid and worried that Calvin might have a nightmare from looking at this fountain. I didn't dig on the history about this fountain (yet) but it is really strange that the people of Bern do not seem to be too fazed by this image of cannibalistic infanticide.

After what seems to be a walk of eternity, we ended crossing the bridge to our final destination. To see the famous bears. Which is literally the mascott of the town.

Just a bonus picture on our way to see the bear. I am still not sure if this is a real person posing a yoga. We had a debate with the children about it. Still continues to talk about it on our way home. It was a great day. I hope your Saturday was a fun one as well.

For more photos on this trip, you may visit here.