Thursday, June 7, 2007

Eric's Thoughts from Switzerland


Wow! This is an amazing country. I always remember being amazed when I was small child, and my family and I used to come skiing here, but nothing prepared me for my reactions as an adult. The country is just filled with beautiful hills and mountains everywhere. The buildings are uniquely Swiss and interesting. The city/town of Bern (pop. 110,000) where we currently are staying is amazingly clean and pedestrian friendly (for the most part; there is a huge amount of construction in the downtown area). There are so many wonderful things to see here. There is a river that is the color of a swimming pool. There is a pit with bears (the picture is of one of the bears; they do cute begging behaviors for fruit that you can buy to feed them). There is a zoo where you can see about half the animals in the zoo just by wandering around in this park area. Jenny and I just wandered aimlessly for the day with no real goal or objectives, and we had simply an amazing time. The whole experience seemed surreal. The people here are also very courteous and helpful considering this is an area where we are hitting the language barrier the hardest. Most of the locals speak Swiss German although we are finding they use some French (which I took in high school and college) and many do understand some English. The biggest problem we are having is reading signs and menus.


I think the most interesting thing about how much fun we are having is that this town was just intended as a brief stop over before heading into the mountains.


Anyway, I am done for now. I hope all of you are well.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I'm headed off to work, but wanted to check your blog and wish you another wonderful day of discovery.

LOVE, MOM