Friday October 17th
Today was a free day, but it was rather cold and miserable in Kandersteg in the morning, while the weather forecast for Bern was good. Also, Bern sounded like an interesting town, so Paul and I caught a train there. It took just over an hour, starting high above the valley but soon descending to the valley floor and passing through more and more little towns on the outskirts of Bern.
Once there, we quickly found the tourist office and hired two iPods with a tour of Bern, which is a historic city full of interesting buildings.
One of the first stops on the tour was the Bagpiper fountain.
This was the first of about 15 city fountains, all from the 1500s. The city was well supplied with public fountains from the Middle Ages, and they still flow today with water you can drink. We didn't, but later in the tour we passed some workmen who were drinking from one and also washing their faces. The bagpiper fountain showed a rather ragged musician playing the bagpipes, musicians being very popular in the Middle Ages, but not well paid!
The next stop on the tour was the Prison Tower.
This was actually one of the original gates of the city, and it had been decided to use the upper storeys as a prison. There are still bars on the windows under the clock.
The trams going away from you in this photo pass through this gate. The trams coming towards you pass to the left of the gate.
A little further down the street is the Dutch Tower. This was originally used for secret smoking!
Apparently, the use of tobacco was forbidden in 17th century Bern - which seems to me an excellent idea! Dutch merchants who wanted to smoke tobacco they had imported came to the upper room in this tower to smoke it in secret.
The imposing baroque building below is the Swiss Parliament building.
In the summer months when it is hot, the fountains are apparently very popular. It was pretty hot today, we were both in short sleeved shirts, but didn't quite feel inclined to run into the jets of water. Mind you, neither did anybody else!
Our walk took us to the Kirchenfeld bridge where we looked down on a very old part of Bern, called the Mattequartier, medieval Bern's smallest neighbourhood. Workshops and mercantile activity filled this area, and medieval sources tell of numerous complaints about the ceaseless and apparently nerve-wracking noise of machinery, carts and commerce. There were three city-owned watermills built in 1360.
This was also the area where the city bath houses used to be, and consequently it attracted prostitutes. Apparently, Casanova visited here!
The Town Clock just a short distance away is absolutely amazing!
On the very top is a golden man who strikes a bell for the hour. Under him is the big clock, with a pointing hand for the hours and an arrow for the minutes. Under that are 5 panels of Roman Gods for 5 days of the week - Tuesday to Saturday. Sunday and Monday are represented by the sun and moon on the astrological clock just above the arch. They're probably too small to see in my photo, but the moon is half black and half gold and turns to show the different phases. Also too small to see are the moving figures on the right of the astrological clock. There's a golden rooster which crows for the hours, various figures which come out, and above them is the figure of Chronos who turns the hourglass for the number of hours. It's quite a performance!
We went on to the cathedral, which is undergoing restoration so parts of it were swathed in plastic sheeting - hence there's no overall photograph. However, we were able to see the wonderful carving over the main door.
It shows the Last Judgement; the big gold figure with the sword is St Michael, and he's overcoming a kind of nasty grey coloured Satan, who has one foot on a set of scales. Behind them, the saved are on the left, in lovely white garments. And on the left are the damned, all naked and suffering torments; for instance, you won't be able to see it in my photo, but a man on the right is being nipped with big gold pincers in a very painful place, a punishment for the sin of lust!
Opposite the cathedral is the Moses fountain. Moses, with a long beard, is holding the tablet of the Ten Commandments and pointing to the second commandment, the one about not making any graven images; this is a Protestant cathedral. However, the carvings over the door were not destroyed, even though they are also graven images. The guide said it was thought necessary to remind people not to sin; I wonder if it was really an artistic rather than a religious decision, but at least the wonderful carvings weren't destroyed.
We went along a little narrow alleyway nearby to see the Spysi, a charitable institution set up by the burghers of Bern in the Middle Ages to provide low cost meals for those in want during the colder months. It is still open, and apparently popular with workmen and elderly people.
Right next door to it is what remains of a medieval lavatory, so, as I haven't recently been following my usual procedure of photographing historic bathrooms for quite a while, I thought I'd photograph this one!
It is set directly over a medieval sewer, now covered over with dark grey paving slabs. There is a gap in the houses opposite, as you don't build over an open sewer. Also on one of the houses opposite is a tiny room on the second floor which overhangs the sewer. This was also another lavatory, obviously with direct sewer access!
We walked across the Nydegg bridge over the river Aar, which is only a few hundred years old but overlooks the first bridge that was originally built a few years after Berne was founded in the 12th century.
It was originally wooden, and was re-built in stone in the 15th century. Before there were any bridges, the only way into the city from that side was by boat; the gap you can see in the houses was the original landing stage for the boats.
We crossed right over the bridge and went to have a look at the bear pits. Bears are the symbol of Bern, and the city has always kept bears. The bear pits no longer felt to be a suitable environment for bears, so they aren't used today; today's bears have a much nicer and larger enclosure beside the river, with trees for shade and their own long swimming pool which is almost like a canal parallel to the river.
Both bears were looking a bit hot as it was a very hot afternoon by then, and they were sitting panting in the shade.
There was a lot more to the tour, we were walking around for more almost three and a half hours, but I've probably written too much already and there are certainly too many photos.
However, I have to say something about the shopping arcades. Originally, the streets were wider and the traders set up stalls to sell their goods in front of the houses. Then roofs were wanted to shelter the stalls, so the houses began to be built with an overhang, so forming an arcade. This is the case throughout the old town and means shoppers are out of both sun and rain as they window shop.
I certainly found it pleasantly shady and cool to be out of the sun, and the pavement is nice and smooth - the streets are mostly cobbled so I found them a bit hard on my ankles after a while.
There are all the usual high street shops - including C & A! Britain must be the only place where we no longer have one of those, we saw them in Germany too.
Something else we don't have in Britain is anything like this beautiful delicatessen.
If I hadn't been so tired by then, I'd have gone in and bought something, but my feet were getting very sore and quite swollen so we made our way back to the tourist office to return our iPod tour guides, and were back on the platform 10 minutes before our train.
Our return journey had one big difference; the low clouds had lifted, and we saw a wall of white mountains in the distance.
These are three peaks you can see from Bern on a clear day. They are the Eiger, Mönch and Jungfrau mountains, I believe in that order, starting from the left.
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