We had arrived in Switzerland with a list of potential places to visit, but no plan on how to visit them. So while it rained outside yesterday I began to punch different places into google maps, it turns out everything is about 100 kilometers from everywhere else, so after looking at some options we decided there was no particular order that made more sense than another, and we could kind of wing the rest of the time we spend in Switzerland.
We decided to head to Bern today because it had a nice campground in the middle of the city and its old town is a UNESCO site. It rained steadily all night and when we woke up in the morning the valley that St. Ursanne is located in was pretty socked in with fog. It was only 106 kilometers to Bern so we were not in a big hurry to get going, but despite dragging our feet as much as we could we were still on the road by 10:00.
The roads are very good in Switzerland with lots of tunnels to keep you from doing a lot of elevation changes. Today they were all limited access though often only one lane, but traffic was light. So despite the rain we found ourselves arriving at the campground in Bern at 11:30. The only drama was we followed a VW camper from Scotland the last kilometer or so into the campground. When they arrived there the people at the campground asked them to move back. As they were backing up it became clear to me they could not see a sign directly in their rear, when they got a foot or so from hitting it I leaned on my horn, they stopped a couple of inches short of the sign, and an irritated Scottish voice shouted over to me “what are you blowing your horn for”, I asked if they saw the sign 2 inches from their rear end, she looked startled and then pulled forward a bit.
After we settled in, we decided to take a stroll along the river. After walking a quarter mile or so I told Ton we could be in the center of the city in 15 minutes if we took a bus nearby. While the campgrounds in Switzerland are extremely expensive, in urban areas they come with free usage of the local transit system. So since the bus ride was free we decided to check out the center of town despite the weather not being great for photographs.
We spent the next couple of hours strolling down the main street of the town. We accidentally found the bear pen where the mascots of the city are kept near the river. Two of the bears were hiding, but one was nice enough to take his nap in the open for the tourists.
After looking at the sleeping bear for a couple of minutes we noticed a beer hall next door and got a beer. The beer hall was full of British accents and we were a little perplexed until we figured out that an English Premier League soccer team was in town to play the local Swiss team in the European Champions League.
After our beer we took advantage of our free transit pass to head back to François for the night. When we returned we bumped into the Scottish lady who had snapped at us earlier in the day, she thanked us profusely as they had not seen the sign and would have hit it if I hadn’t blown my horn at them.