Berner Bach Chor likes to “beat the music to death”, in other words, they want their performances to be perfect so they rehearse intensely. This week this meant Jon had an extra Saturday rehearsal, originally planned for 2 pm to 9 pm, but changed to 2 to 6. Friday we had friends over for dinner who reminded us that this was the last Bern Free Museum Day, so with the morning free, we finally visited the Bern Historical Museum. Great! Looking forward to going back and seeing more as we only had 3 hours there.
Built to house the city's historical museum, the building itself is magnificent.
I came back to Bern to join Jon after his rehearsal, ostensibly to go to a co-worker’s party, but due to a mix-up resulting from the language barrier, we went to the wrong address and ended up simply eating dinner at a—fortunately very good—Japanese restaurant which we would never have found without the mix-up.
A well-preserved and displayed tapestry in Bern Historical Museum.
With only Sunday to bike, we chose to circle the Gurten, Bern’s massive hill-park. Jon planned a GPS route of 48km and we took off, knowing with cooler temps and a shorter ride, it would be a light day. Yeah, well, I wish I could show you the elevation profile!
We could see all the way to Thun Lake from the Gurten!
Anyway, we accomplished the task set before us, feeling rather proud when we analyzed our track: a max of 14% uphill grade and 21% down! Home again, home again, and naptime for you know who.
The Plan: bike 90+km to Yverdon-les-Bains, overnight at a hotel, bike home along the north side of Lake Neuchatel. The actual trip: bike 96km over too many hills in too hot weather with too little sunscreen, try to lift legs to walk through Yverdon, collapse in worse-than-basic hotel room, eat hotel’s petite dejeuner (not a Swiss-style fruhstuck), strain over steep terraced hillsides to Neuchatel, let the SBB do the pedaling from there to Bern. In other words, we had another great weekend! Herewith the pics.
Skyline of Medieval Murten, overlooking the Murtensee
Tiny Murten has a big reputation. It has a nice medieval old town and a nearly fully preserved town wall. We sampled the local specialty: Nidelkuchen (cream cake).
Jon in Murten
Throughout Switzerland there are remains of Roman rule. We climbed the hill in Avenches to see its ancient amphitheater.
Avenches Amphitheater
1757 Protestant Temple in Yverdon-les-Bains
North of Yverdon are menhirs (standing stones), some five thousand years old. They were reset in their original positions in 1986, one of many clusters of Neolithic stone circles and dolmens near Lake Neuchâtel.
Old rocker by old rock
A brief pause, after climbing through the vineyards, by an old palace. There was someone working on the landscaping, so I casually asked him (in French) whether this place was his. He told me no, but it is for sale. Perhaps I would like to buy?
Know anyone looking for a chateau near Neuchâtel? This one is available, complete with guard's armor atop the entry.
The Eglise Collégial, Neuchâtel’s Cathedral, has a 1372 ‘Monument to the Counts’, memorial statues to its rulers. During the Reformation, the town folk so identified this as purely Neuchâtelois that they refused to tear it down when the rest of the artwork was being destroyed.
Monument to the Counts in the Eglise Collegial
Beside the Eglise stands a former chateau, now a public building where government business is conducted. The courtroom’s walls are lined with heraldic shields which tell the history of the town’s rulers.
Itinerary: Saturday: bike ride through peaceful farmland to Thun and back
Sunday: hike an Alpine meadow with friends
Sounds like a quiet weekend, getting in touch with nature? It certainly started that way. The route we planned to Thun was not the shortest, for it took us through the Valley of the Gurbe River, renowned for cabbages and sauerkraut.
Jon's Cabbage Patch Doll
Gliding over the rolling hills, we passed classic Swiss scenery and paused in an ancient and amazingly serene rock church in Amsoldingen.
Difficult to show in a picture is the feeling of peace 'in your bones' that I experienced in this church in Amsoldingen.
Then we rolled on down to Thun where the quiet ended. Thun was in festival mode. Streets were lined with booths and packed with people, amusement rides hard at work, and rock bands blaring as though they all wanted to be heard at the other end of the lake. We chose to leave Thun’s castle for another day and followed the edge of the Thun See to Schloss Oberhofen (Schloss is German for palace, more than a home, less than a fortress, usually pretty elaborate residence).
Schloss Oberhofen
It was a beautiful day for a wedding—we saw at least 3 in progress, including in the courtyard at Oberhofen.
Our return route was more direct and that meant, unfortunately, quite a bit of time within earshot of the heavily trafficked A6 freeway. But we had clocked another 84 km on the bike and ticked off a few more Swiss sights.
Sunday, ah, that will be peaceful, yes? Our friends picked us up at the all-too-early hour of 7:15. We drove (via the A6) back south beyond Thun to Engstligenalp where Jon risked life and limb to try Klettersteig (aka via ferrata). This is climbing with a harness along a permanently-installed cable line. I took the easy way up in a gondola.
Jon climbing on the Via FerrataEdelweis 'in situ', spotted along the Via Ferrata
I arrived at the top at 9:30. It was just me and maybe 6 other people in view in the whole meadow. After a short nap atop a hillock, I woke to see a line of people walking the trail, including quite a few in wheelchairs! Switzerland believes in access: this meadow includes 5 km of wheelchair-accessible trails so everyone can get their dose of Alpine air. Climbing down from my perch, I started hiking with the crowd, passing the two restaurants, one of which had live music. It took walking almost an hour to the other side of the bowl to find ‘quiet’. There I could hear only the rippling streams and cowbells, the latter rather noisy in their own right. Jon and friends completed their climb and we pic-nic’d by a cold mountain stream.
Weather was iffy: Saturday looked probably good, but Sunday was given a high chance of rain. That and high hotel rates led us to make our ride yesterday round-trip. We knew that if at any point it was too difficult, we could head to a train station and get home easily and cheaply. So, off to Burgdorf, an 86 km. route on Swiss Regional bike trails. With a new rear bike rack and case holding our emergency gear (those rains might come early), even riding on gravel paths was easy. Heading toward Langnau and the Emme River (Emmental means valley of the Emme and yes, that’s where the cheese comes from), was a bit of a climb. Then we had a gradual downhill from Langnau through and beyond Burgdorf, ending with a smaller uphill climb to home. In Burgdorf itself we were entertained by a typically high-priced Swiss café and a lovely little castle, where we learned a little about antique ceramics, the Swiss gold rush and making linen.
Cows and alps
Burgdorf castle towerTextile museum in Burgdorf castle
Our guests left this morning after a very full 10 days of Swiss touring: they walked Bern, rode the Golden Pass Train, toured Chillon and Lausanne, visited Murten and Avenches, hiked to Kleine Scheidegg, snow-tubed on the Jungfrau, hiked in Zermatt, toured Neuchatel and Lucerne. And most evenings found them eating very well: either they were making Indian-style food for us or were invited out for BBQ.
Patel Family cooking in our kitchen
Jon knew Anil from working together in San Rafael. But neither of us knew his family: wife Beth and sons Zachary and Austen. They have traveled a lot, including trips to India and China that were decidedly not luxurious. So having a home base to work from made it a relaxing vacation for them. And they are easy to be with, consistently agreeable and considerate making it a relaxing visit for us.
Anil and Jon outside Autodesk in Gumligen
Jon and I were able to join our guests on the weekends:
Typical Swiss Farmland, taken from the Golden Pass TrainAt Chillon, Jon & I consider the benefits of a larger kitchen
Vineyards above Lausanne by Lake GenevaWe happened to arrive at Lausanne at the end of a World Orienteering Race
Lucerne's Kapellbrucke "Chapel Bridge"Lucerne's famous covered bridges are decorated inside with 16th cen. paintingsLion Memorial commemorating Swiss Guards massacred during the French Revolution
BBQ at Hugues'
After a week and a half of guests and touring, we enjoyed a brisk 20 km on the bike through Swiss countryside.
This week we’re preparing for guests. We borrowed an air mattress. Which then necessitated borrowing a transformer to pump it. We’ve sent emails back and forth about what to bring us (Jon’s choral clothes) and what they want to do while here (cheese, chocolate, Alps). We finally took the last of the suitcases and bike boxes to the basement storage unit. And Jon, through much struggle, installed the dining room chandelier!
I had a full day at last: filled with cleaning everything in the house, setting up beds, and grocery shopping (two visits, couldn’t carry it all in one). It felt good to have a clear and physical function. Even though my ‘job’ as ‘vacation planner‘ is theoretically always there to be done, it’s elusive and frustrating with many dead-ends and lots of sitting. So, we’re ready.
Well, we’re ready for the coming two weekends with our guests. Then there’s all the weeks and weekends beyond that. In the last two days we’ve finalized travel plans for our Paris trip (7/28-8/1) and gone through 14 permutations of possibilities for a trip to Scandinavia (potentially August or September). Somehow the planning has not, as I had hoped, become easier.
It has been a soccer summer with the European games going on. For weeks it was everywhere. You pass a bar and hear a game. In the restaurant in Konstanz (an otherwise elegant place), the game was showing on a big screen TV. At Turnhalle, a bar in the courtyard of an old gymnasium where Jon’s co-workers like to go on Thursdays for a beer or a ‘Cuba Libre’ (rum and coke), a tent was set up with a TV and waves of cheers and moans washed over those outside. So it seemed fitting that Autodesk held its annual Soccer tournament in Switzerland this year and we were able to attend. The Neuchatel AD office is quite large and fields two teams. Gumligen is quite small and has no one who is even interested. Thus it was that Jon and I were able to borrow the company car and drive by ourselves to Neuchatel for the all-day event Saturday 7/7.
Autodesk Soccer Tournament in Neuchatel
Once again, the theme of the year played out: things foreign may be interesting but they are also stress-inducing. After a week of facing minor everyday foreignnesses like not knowing what someone is saying to you or whether the change you’re getting back is correct, driving a strange car to a new place on roads with different signs wasn’t exactly a fun time. The games themselves were fun. We’ve begun to understand the rules a bit and although we knew almost no one there, we managed to meet a number of people and have some nice conversations.
Lake Neuchatel
Sunday was bike repair day. The tandem’s front tire had gone flat from a slow leak, the result of a failed old patch thus requiring a new tube. And it was caked with dirt from the muddy paths we’ve been on. All 3 bikes needed cleaning and oiling. And we needed a bit of body repair as well, a quiet at home day was definitely due.
Perhaps you have read our earlier blog entries: our wonderful weekend adventures. Our weekdays, however, are not so exceptional. Jon is working as he would back home, with all the challenges and frustrations that has always entailed. I (Mary Carol) am living the quiet life, where the nearly daily trip to the grocery store is my big thrill. I have begun to accept the high prices of food. Of course, I try to shop carefully, but when I get to the counter, I just stick Jon’s credit card in the slot and press “ok”, barely looking at the total. We have TV, mostly watching either BBC or recorded shows from our home set via slingbox.
Jon has joined two choruses so some nights he’s off to Bern to rehearse. Occasional Thursdays he or we join a few Autodesk employees who hang out in Turnhalle, a cafe-bar in downtown Bern.
Jon in Cantos Classico
I water my few veggies on the balcony, spend some hours every day researching possibilities for our trips, listen to a little German TV or translate part of the newspaper, and often partake of that most popular Swiss activity: walking. Jon and I are starting to say the Swiss drive and ride bikes like they have no place to go but walk like they do. Nordic walking—with poles and a sense of determination—seems quite common.
Itinerary: On the bike, follow Swiss Regional Route 64 to Biel, stay overnight, come home by way of Sankt Peterinsel and Swiss National Route 8.
Looking for something close and easy, we chose Biel as our destination. Jon was able to put the routes into our GPS. And we decided to try a trip without the trailer, just a small pack, so no camping.
Cow Crossing on our way to Biel
Biel is downriver from Bern so the 45k ride to Biel was as expected a gentle downhill grade, through what now seems typical to us: constantly changing vista of small towns, farmland, and forests. No surprises, nothing amazing. Biel itself is mostly a modern city with bland buildings. We took a funicular to Magglingen—us and a few dozen heavily padded mountain bikers. They rode down; we walked. Looking at their trails, we understood the padding. The view from up top was amazing. The walk through the forest, delightful. Biel’s tiny bit of Oldtown, a couple blocks of medieval buildings, was unimpressive. After dinner, we strolled down by the harbor, picked up some ice cream to go with the cherries we’d gotten at a roadside stand and called it a night.
Sunday we felt quite capable of going the extra miles to see Sankt Peterinsel, a long narrow island at the southern end of the Bielersee. Apparently it’s a popular place for a stroll on a sunny Sunday morning, for we shared the path with lots of walkers, baby strollers, and other cyclists.
We knew our route back to Bern would be, on average, uphill since it was upriver. But the Swiss surprised us. The 8 is a National Route, yet there are spots where we passed through private property, carried the bike up and down stairs, and generally had a much harder time than we expected.
Bike Path Steps on our way home from Biel
We did have a fun lunch in Aarberg, a cute town with a wooden covered bridge leading to the Oldtown square. A group of Harley motorcycles rode up and parked beside our bike, then some of the riders politely asked if they could share our table as the others were all full. Jon often tells the story of carrying a sign on his van loaded with bikes “When we grow up we want to be Harleys”. So MC points to our tandem and tells this to the Harley folks, the one English speaker passing this along to the others in German. Good for a laugh all round.
Harleys alongside our tandem in Aarberg
The last stretch was through Bremgarten Forest, which should have felt idyllic, a carless road through cool green shade. But we were so exhausted, even this seemed a struggle. That’s how it is, in life or in life on a bike, you can’t always know where the tough stretches will be.
It felt like we were taking it easy. Yes, there were a few hills the first day. But we had so much time to cover not many kilometers (Schaffhausen to Basel in 3 days), that the pace seemed almost leisurely. Especially since through this area, the ambience is all lovely farmland, pretty little towns, and the swiftly flowing Rhine.
Schaffhausen is known for its oriels (bay windows above the ground floor). They were once a status symbol for the rich merchants in this town which was built up simply because shippers needed a place to off-load their goods in order to get around the falls.
Schaffhausen Oriels
Since the bikepath often took us along hiking paths through the woods along the river, we saw a few remains of cement bunkers, left from World War II. Often German territory is directly across the Rhine from Switzerland.
WWII Cement BunkerWild Roadside PoppiesMale Swan by Coot Nest
We stopped at Augusta Raurica a partially reconstructed Roman amphitheater, a little east of Basel. For another point of view, search on “Augusta Raurica, Augst, Switzerland” and zoom in on the satellite view.
