The Most Beautiful City Ever

This city is magnificent. Stone streets run outside scores of shops in the Old City where electric trams and hybrid travel back and forth. Sharp steeples and large green hills dominate the immediate background while the stark, white crags of the Swiss Alps sit further back against the horizon under a veil of mist. Being here is like living in the perfect painting.

Bern shuts down around 7 or 8pm, but there appears to still be some nightlife. Like Amsterdam, bikes are everywhere and the boys are stunningly beautiful. It is beyond me how almost all these people have pretty much zero fat on their bodies.

We spent yesterday making grocery store food from the train station in the hostel's perfect kitchen and wrestling with washing machines that cost way too much money to operate. That adventure ended with the three of us washing socks in a sink at 2am while trying to stifle fits of laughter so we didn't wake the whole hostel.

Today we stumbled upon a huge, city-wide women's foot race (appropriately named the "Swiss Women's Race") that took over all of Bern. We walked toward the nearest big hill with the intention of hiking it, but came across a huge park next to the Aare River full of people. The Aare is a beautiful, aqua-blue, clear, winding, fast, freezing cold river that divides the city in two.

After changing into swim trunks and laying out our towels on the grass, we walked about a quarter mile upstream to jump into the 5mph, 50 degree water with the intention of speedily floating back to the park. Unfortunately, that didn't work out so well for me. For whatever reason I ended up losing the ability to stay afloat and kept falling deeper in the water. At the time it didn't occur to me to flip onto my back and float like I had seen everyone else doing. Either way, feeling like I was about to drown is a very frightening feeling. Michael noticed what was happening, grabbed a rock, and then grabbed me to haul me out of the current. It really was a terrifying experience, and I'm not sure what would have happened if he wasn't there.

We spent the rest of the day under the sun in the park recovering and ogling the endless Swiss eye candy. When it started getting late, we took a long, roundabout route home through beautiful residential neighborhoods before getting more food to prepare at the hostel.