Geneva, Mountains, and Help Me I Don't Speak a Lick of German

Hello friends!

Right now we are in Bern, and sitting inside our hostel for a little while, waiting for the rain to let up a bit so we can go see SOME sights today. I guess I can't complain too much, since this is really the first real rain we've hit on this entire trip so far, which is impressive in and of itself. Ha! Try doing that, Fraser Valley! 3 weeks without hardly any rain! Crazy talk.

Bern is seriously beautiful, but I will leave that for the end of this post. Let's keep it chronological, shall we? (Or, relatively.) First I'll tell you what else we got up to in Geneva.

The second day we were there, we walked down through a park that was really near to our hostel and went to the History of Science museum, which was amazing! Science-y things from the 17-1800's! They had things like the first steam engine, first battery, and a lot of cool telescopes and such. Actually super cool.

Kinda want one of these in my room. So cool!

The first capacitors!

A funny mirror. We had a good time.

Next, we put our free public transit passes (courtesy of the hostel- kinda awesome) to good use and figured out the bus system to get ourselves up to the cathedral. We had the option to go up into the towers for 5 francs, which was 300% worth it. If you ever go, definitely spring for that! AMAZING views of the city from ALL around, got to walk through the inside of the roofs and the spire (just the base of it, but still!), got up close and personal with the bells, and walk around outside the top of the towers! So cool!

Stained glass, though.

The coolest organ I've seen yet.

Still loving black and white.

The view of Geneva from the top of the tower in the cathedral!

A little HIMYM shoutout. So funny.

Inside the spire! So cool!

Gettin' the shot.

Oh, yeah! And while we were up there, a random marching band went by! Kinda neat!

The detail in some of these windows is beyond imagination. Incredible.

That night we kinda wandered around the Old Town of Geneva with all cobblestone streets and such, which was lovely, and then had a somewhat small supper in a little pub/restaurant. Twas quite nice.

Only in Switzerland. Saw this guy while strolling around through old town and the main shopping part down by the water.

The next day was New Year's Eve! In the morning, we went to another cathedral that we had seen by the train station the day before, and checked that out. I don't think I'll ever get tired of looking at cathedrals and castles, haha! They're all so beautiful and different from one another. Amazing.

Thought it was kinda interesting how they had a statue of Jesus up at the very front center. 

Mmm. Those arches.

Then we headed to the Natural History Museum and spent some time up there looking at terrifying taxidermied animals and such. And a live two-headed turtle! So creepy. But kinda cool. And good museum as a whole.

Tree trunk that had been replaced by rock in all cool colours and patterns. (I want one for a coffee table.)

Thoroughly enjoyed the rocks/minerals section. HOW do they grow like that? So cool.

Preeeeeety.

Dude, nice hairdo. 

Then we walked back down through Old Town again and walked along the water before taking a water taxi back to the hostel. After meeting our extremely loud, annoying, and drunk roommates, we went out for supper (after leaving the windows wide open to air out the room) and then went back to the hostel to hang out for awhile. We watched a movie (Despicable Me 2! So good!) and then bundled up to head down to the docks to watch a lovely fireworks display! Super chill evening. Rather nice.

Ta-da!

And another because I really like fireworks!

All of our failed attempts at lighting the sparklers I brought along. We gave up after all of these. Will try again with less wind and probably a real lighter.

Next day it was on to Bern! We were both pretty tired, and I thought I would sleep on the train, but Switzerland is just so GOSH DARN BEAUTIFUL that it's kind of hard not to stare out the window at it. So that's what we did.

So. Nice.

'Swiss' chocolate in the Swiss alps! Mmmmm.

Castle/church/cool town!

And now, as I said, we are in Bern! Waiting out the weather, but still going to brave it, I think. We're from BC. We can handle a little rain!

Yesterday, while we were walking around Old Town a bit, we came to the square outside the cathedral to find a MASSIVE crowd of people. We weren't sure what was going on, but it was about 5 minutes to 4 so we decided to wait and see what happened. And sure enough, when the clock struck 4pm, the bells in the tower started ringing- and didn't stop for 15 minutes! Crazy! Still not entirely sure why everyone was there, but I assume it was just to hear the bells. Everyone even applauded it afterwards! Interesting. Wondering if it was because it was New Year's Day, but I'm not sure if they did it at every hour or just the one. Interesting nonetheless.

And I think that's about it! Next couple days we'll be exploring around Bern some more so I'll have more to tell you then! That is, if we are able to make our way around. We've moved on to German Switzerland and the extent of my German starts and ends with "danke" "bitte" and calling someone a turtle (thank you, friends who were in German in high school for the latter), so we'll see how this goes! It'll be an adventure for sure!

Till next time, Happy New Year!