Still feeling a bit average. The night out with Harry in Zurich went a little overboard, and that combined with the city waking up at 6am as it does meant that I was in rather poor form yesterday. 5 hours sleep and I jumped on the train down to Bern (I managed to figure out the ticket machine but ended up wimping out and bought a ticket from the man in the window because I thought I must have made a mistake when the price quoted was Fr.45. For a 1 hour journey!)
Helen (Olly’s girl) picked me up from the station and gave me a little tour of the city and appropriate tourist spots. It’s really amazing just how many tourists these European cities are crawling with. It surely must aggravate the locals having people like me armed with a camera gawking and blocking their streets.
Went back to their house and I got a chance to unpack and finally check out my bike. Just a little factoid: Swiss mechanics charge Fr. 95 / hour. I’ll say no more on the matter!
It’s rather nice to be in someone’s home now rather than crawling around the city and crashing out in hostels. Went out to this completely and utterly bizarre establishment last night. Establishment is the only word I can think to use, “bar” or “club” just doesn’t cut it. It’s set up in the foothills of the Alps (barely) and sprawls over 4 levels of this very very old wooden a-frame house I suppose. Tiny spiral staircases very narrow walkways and creaking boards, the kind of stuff you’d never get away with in Aus from a fire hazard sense.
But the props all over the place. Never seen anything like it. From cuckoo clocks to life size Lara Croft figureines. I really couldn’t believe what I was seeing… so much time and effort must have gone into fitting the place out. The strangest part for me was understanding where all these hundreds of party goers had come from given we were located in an area that – to me – felt like a remote mountain range. Helen took photos which I will post when I get a chance.
Unfortunately I was too tired to really enjoy the band (who really were fantastic… from somewhere in Northern Africa) and wound up crashing out in the back of Olly’s Volks Golf while he finished up working behind the bar. So another late night and while I slept a lot better, I still have something of a defecit.
Need to take the bike out for a spin today to get used to it, and driving on the wrong side of the road. I’ve been feeling a lot better about it now since having been driven around a bit my Olly and Helen; it makes a lot more sense when you’re in a car rather than as a pedestrian.
Problem is it’s been pissing down with rain (and hail and thunder!) for the last 15 hours, but that has finally stopped now. Olly is working on a friend’s house up in the hills – a stunning 100+ year old very Swiss looking thing. Quite a strange feeling to be there yesterday when it was raining, fog was filling all the nooks and crannies in the surrounding mountain ranges, but it was still a rather comfortable 18 degrees. Typical Swiss summer apparently!
Weather should be improving for the weekend so I’m planning on leaving tomorrow morning. Got to go buy some maps and psych myself up today. Haven’t worked out where the next stop is, but I imagine it’s somewhere up deep in the Swiss/Italian alps. Might pay to phone ahead for some accomodation.
