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This is a view of Bern from the rose garden overlooking the city.
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This is another view of downtown Bern.
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And yet again, but this time with a little of the river showing.
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This is a downtown street in Bern. The rainbow flags are part of a gay
pride celebration that was going on that afternoon.
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Ever wondered how far the real Bern was from Bern, Idaho? Neither did
I, until I saw this plaque.
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This is Gerlinde and Edgar, overlooking Bern. I don't know how old
they are (not that old), but they defy any indications of aging, both
in spirit and physical ability.
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This is a government building in Bern -- I believe it's actually
a Swiss place, rather than local government.
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This is a view out of the castle in Thun, where Edgar and I went one
afternoon. The town is delightful, and the castle was quite
interesting. Apparently a colony of bats roosts there, and one of the
bat conservationists there was really interested to hear that I was
from Austin and asked me about the Mexican freetail bats that come
there every year.
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This is Gerlinde and Edgar's apartment, as viewed from the street.
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A random feline on the street.
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Part of a cathedral in Bern.
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A famous clock tower in downtown Bern.
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These are shots of the dam that can be seen from an overlook in
downtown Bern.
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Bern, like lots of larger cities (in both Europe and the US), has a
pretty good public transportation system. They have both a
Strassenbahn and a bus system, and part of the busses are powered by
overhead electrical wires. The Strassenbahn has a single overhead
wire, so the circuit is completed between the track and the wire,
while the bus system has two wires overhead. Major intersections tend
to have pretty impressive spaghetti junctions like this one. The thing
in the top of the picture is a streetlight, also hung from wires
crossing the intersection.
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This is an electric bus. Look at the two vertical power bars running
up on the rear end of things.
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This is a flower garden right near G&E's apartment.
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And this is a fountain downtown.
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And this is a tram that ran down into the valley in town. I thought
the design was neat, as it kept the riders level the entire way.
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This is a view of part of the garden area.
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And this is a view of the Hochmuth's garden, along with the garden
house. The little house here was big enough to contain a stove, a gas
fridge, and some bunk beds for summer stays. Apparently when the kids
were younger they would spend summer nights out here and the kids
would play with other families' kids that also had gardens.
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We went to a birthday party held in the garden area of a friend of
Gerlinde and Edgar. This is Sinka, one of the attendees. Sinka was
extremely well behaved and polite police dog responsible for one of
the other attendees.
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One of the folks barbecuing.
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This is Edgar helping out with the Crepe-making on the barbecue
pit. The food was delicious that evening.
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The sign indicating the oldest drugstore in Bern. I verified that it
is still there, and according to the sign it' been there sign 1571.
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This is the Bern rose garden.
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This is a view in Bern down to some more garden places.
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This is from G&E's apartment. I liked the shower here. The building
is fairly old, and probably didn't have hot water heaters when
built. In any case, the hot water here is just how like I like it --
hot and available. Initial concerns about the prospect of having an
electric water heater a foot from the shower disappeared when I
noticed that the temperature didn't actually stop at "lukewarm" like
most of the youth hostels I've stayed at.
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This is the guest bedroom that I stayed in.
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This is the view out my bedroom window. You can see the mountains out
in the distance; in clearer weather you can go upstairs to the attic
area and look out the window over the roofs on either side and get a
beautiful view. I didn't have my camera with me when I saw it, but it
was beautiful.
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This is the view out of the guest bathroom out onto the street in Bern.
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This was Nicole and Marco, before embarking on the car trip from Bern
to Prague. The upside-down doll heads behind them are from Gerlinde's
doll-making stuff.
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As usual, you can get to the whole picture page.
