Three days in Bern
We didn’t plan to spend this much time there, but the weather forecast for the mountains was terrible, so we decided at the last minute to extend our stay in the city, assuming there would be more to do there in the event of heavy rain. So as we walked out of Bern station on Sunday for the first time and saw the Heiliggeistkirche in front of us, bathed in early evening sunshine, I had the usual new-city feeling: lacking any sense of how this unfamiliar place fitted together, its texture, its key landmarks, or how we would come to navigate and think about it over the coming days. But I also knew - and I was right - that at the end of our time there we would have become acquainted with parts of it, and have started to create mental maps in which to drop memories from our brief stay.
Bern is in the north-west of Switzerland, and although it is Switzerland’s capital it is only its fourth largest city, about the size of Watford. But it has something of the feel of places like Durham or Lincoln - steep, old and cobbled. The River Aare (which goes on to join the Rhine and so eventually empties into the North Sea, some 500 miles to the north) seems to grip part of the centre of the city - the Enge peninsula - in its right hand, surrounding it on three sides.
We crossed the square to the tram and bus stops on the far side, under an elegant, wavy glass roof, and managed first time to get on the right bus (the 10) in the right direction for our hotel, north over the Aare, which flowed turquoise far below us, and through Viktoriaplatz, a route that would become reassuringly familiar. The screens in the buses make it easy for tourists to work out whether they’re on the right bus and when to get off: travelling here proved a pleasure, especially as our hotel gave us free travel for our stay (which seems to be a common thing in Switzerland), and we never had to wait more than a few minutes for a bus to arrive.
Back into the city centre that evening for something to eat, where the intense waiters at the pizza restaurant in the Waisenhausplatz spoke Italian to this English family in a French-German speaking country, we got a second view of the city from a new angle. Then we walked east along Kramgasse, its stone cobbles one of the defining textures of the city (especially when bumping over them on a trolleybus), the river a couple of hundred metres to the north and south of us but well below us and out of sight behind the tightly-packed buildings, which proudly displayed national and regional flags.
At the west end of Kramgasse is the Zytglogge (‘time bell’), a famous medieval tower, which has an early 15th-century bell that marks the hour (a wooden figure on the outside pretends to strike the chimes, slightly listlessly, for us tourists). It also has an astronomical clock beneath the main clock that I didn’t spend enough time studying to work out how to read: but looking again it seems to include the signs of the Zodiac, something about the moon, the day of the week, and whether it’s dark or not - mostly useful, and quite clever.
In 1905 Albert Einstein had an apartment just down from the tower, at Kramgasse 49, in an apartment which is now a small but intriguing museum (including on the first floor a room decorated as he would have known it) above a cafe of irresistible but (as is the way) pricey cakes. Though working as a clerk in the patent office, while living here with his young family Einstein published a series of papers that revolutionised physics (including explanations of the special theory of relativity and the consequential equation E=mc²).
On the opposite side of the road is the musical instrument museum, where we saw an ophicleide and a serpent (both used in the original version of Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique, which justifiably had a section of the small museum to itself), and we got to try out an alphorn and a theremin.
On that first evening, we continued our walk along Kramgasse as it turns into Gerechtigkeitsgasse, passed another Einstein apartment, bought ice-cream, and headed for the Nydeggbrucke, which crosses the Aare as it briefly heads north before looping back on itself. At this point the city seems to be on two levels: we get a wonderful view from the bridge down onto the stone Untertorbrücke, the oldest of Bern’s river bridges, and part of the picturesque, red-roofed old city below. The fast-flowing river is a gorgeous, distinctive colour, and it’s easy to understand why, on hot days, Bernese people enjoy swimming in it - including, apparently, commuters returning home from work.
On the far side of the river is the Bear Pit - the bear is the symbol of the city - and there are still real bears kept here; though they now occupy a secluded area towards the river as well as the pit, in which they are peered at by tourists, they still looked a bit sad to me. Further east - the end of the 12 bus route - is the Paul Klee centre, though as we discovered on Monday it is closed on Mondays. North of the bears, above where the tourist coaches park, you can get panoramic views of the city as you walk up the steep, cobbled path to the Rose Garden. Three American teenagers stood on the wall here and danced quirkily to a George Ezra song as we ate breakfast, a performance that is probably now on TikTok somewhere.
The Swiss Parliament building looms high above the river at the south-west corner of the peninsula: it is currently behind scaffolding displaying ‘1848’ ready for the 175th anniversary in a few weeks’ time of the original Swiss federal constitution.
On the square in front of Parliament, fountains dance playfully, as dogs and young children run about and try - but not too hard - to dodge the water, refreshing in the hot summer sun; and across the road, my son took on the locals on the big, wooden street chessboard, watched by an intense, admiring audience.
Further along the river from the Parliament is the cathedral (Minster), which was started in the fifteenth century; its 100 metre tower, which was not completed until the late nineteenth century, is the tallest in Switzerland.
We ate a picnic on the Bundeshausterrasse behind the Parliament building, looking down on the river, then took the funicular railway down the hill and sat by the swift-flowing water looking up at trams rumbling over the Kirchenfeldbrücke, the bridge heading south from the peninsular.
From there I did a two-mile walk round the peninsular, at the river level east then north then back west, the big bridges towering above me, and then climbed 50 metres to walk back south through the city. I discovered that the Kornhausbrücke, the bridge to the north, has a footbridge right next to it, but far below and invisible from the road - reinforcing the sense of a city that works at different levels.
Despite the sunny forecast, there was a thunderstorm on Tuesday, which started as we were at the top of the Gurten mountain south of the city, which we’d climbed on the funicular railway so the kids could go on the summer toboggan; we took the tram back to the station, watching hail and lightning, and sheltered under the glass roof, where eleven different tram and bus routes pass through. The trams and trolleybuses seem to coexist quite happily despite their different electrical systems, creating a confusion of wires above most road junctions. Trams and buses are all in multiple sections, with bendy bits between them - some of the trams have seven sections, roaming the streets like oversized caterpillars. I had to force myself to look left first when crossing a road, so as not to step in front of something coming from an unexpected direction. There are very few cars in the centre of the city, so it feels almost pedestrianised.
The shopping streets in Bern have arcades - nearly four miles of them - like covered pavements with the shops set back from the road, so as the rain continued we were able to stay mostly dry as we headed east again, back to the Einstein cafe for consolatory cake.
On our final day we went to the Kunstmuseum, housed in a building based on the Paris Opera, which showed us pictures by Pollock, Picasso, Degas, Monet, Van Gogh, Mondrian and Renoir, as well as plenty by less-well-known others; I was rather taken with the still lifes of Albert Anker, a nineteenth century Swiss artist who is apparently known as the national artist of Switzerland for his depictions of village life.
Then, after a final lunch on the steps of the Heiliggeistkirche, we trundled our suitcases into the station with a final glance back at a city we now felt we had begun to get to know. We had been Bernese for a few days, and learnt something about this distinctive, intriguing city, explored its nooks, and taken away a sense of the place - mental maps and lasting memories. I hope we may go back to rekindle them some day.