Bern, Switzerland

On Friday morning, my alarm went off at 3:15 a.m....I turned it off and laid back down, bad idea. Jessica kindly buzzed my room at 3:55 (we were suppose to meet at 3:45). Luckily, my backpack was all ready to go and I just grabbed my tooth brush. The four of us (Jessica, Briona, Jennifer, and I) power-walked to the train station for 2 reasons: 1) the train departed at 4:43 and 2) it was still dark outside. We made it to the train station with 10 minutes to spare! The train ride included many transfers, but we arrived in Bern at 12:30 ready to hit the trail since we slept most of the way there. Our first stop, was at Starbucks where I ordered my first Mocha Frappuccino Light that I have had in months. I read the map and after a few minutes of walking we were at the Einstein Haus for a tour. I had no idea Einstein married and had children. Plus, he did his greatest work at the age of 27. Einstein's work also led to the GPS, which made me think of my brothers and hot air ballooning.

After the interesting tour, we kept walking to this viewing of Bears. Yes, bears. The city of Bern was named in 1191 from the first animal ever shot/killed which was a bear. Since the shooting of the bear, the town has kept bears for show. We didn't stay long before walking up this huge hill to a Rosegarten. The Rosegarten consisted of a green lawn with tons and tons of roses planted all along the sides. I spotted a table on the lawn where we sat and ate our packed pb&j sandwiches. The hill gave us a great view of Bern, too. We stayed long enough to take good pictures then continued with the most important event on our agenda: find Swiss chocolate!

I had to ask some store owners, but finally a lady told us on the other side of the clock tower is swiss chocolate. I bought a value pack of 5 to bring back as gifts for the family. With a very successful day in Bern, we loaded back on the train for Gimmelwald, which is a town located in the Swiss Alps!