After leaving Germany, Vanessa and I took a bus from Frankfurt to Bern, Switzerland. Yes, that’s right, Switzerland! Now let me just tell you, Switzerland is definitely all they say it is. This country is BEAUTIFUL! I can’t even believe people just casually get to be born there and grow up there and just… live there. How do you get anything done? Even the Alps! The Alps were total “eye therapy” everywhere I looked. I couldn’t stare enough!
Anyway, before going on about how gorgeous this country is, before arriving, I realized I had not taken a small tiny detail into account. The bus dropped us off in Bern at 5:00am. Check in to our BnB wasn’t until 2pm. That gave us exactly 9 hours of being bums. Well, I figured I could look up what we were going to do while we were on the bus… unfortunately, I knocked out and forgot to do that.
So here’s the deal. It’s 5am, we are sleep deprived, no phone service, no wifi, we have our backpacks full of clothes (which wasn’t much because we each had one large bag, and a purse), and to top it all off, the bus didn’t even drop us off at a normal station! Basically it looked like we were almost in the middle of the wilderness! We saw a small cafe but at 5am, it wouldn’t be until another 4 hours or so for it to open. Vanessa and I just start walking and found a bench to sit on while we decided what to do next. Clearly, we are in for an interesting day.
Upon looking at my map, I could see that a large train and bus station was about 1.5 miles away so we start walking. There they should have food, bathrooms, maybe some WiFi, and best of all Luggage Lockers (which have saved us multiple times throughout the trip by the way).
We walk and talk, and walk and talk, walk and talk… We reach a mall looking place and settle there for a while to have breakfast, use the restroom and try (and fail) to connect to WiFi. It was there where I realized how… uhh… not cheap the food was in Switzerland.
After leaving our luggage in the luggage lockers, we just started walking. By this time, the city was awake, the sun was completely up and it was getting warmer. I noticed on the map that there is a river and by the river was supposed to be a nice park. I thought maybe if we go to a park and find a shady tree, we could take a nap there for a bit. We started walking towards the river and let me just say, the city got more and more beautiful.
I was starting to forget that I felt sleep deprived as we kept walking…
… and walking…
Until we started to get to the river.
This River was not only blue… but it was blue blue!!
My mind…
… could not handle…
All of this BLUEITY!
The water seemed like it was oozing out of a fairy tale dream land. It was the water unicorns use to bathe in! The color was mind-blowing! Not dyed. All natural! Amazing.
Walking resumed and the views were getting good. We crossed the river and began to hike up a hill where we found another cozy bench by a tree casting its beautiful Swiss shade.
The view from there only got better…
Being sleep deprived with this view made it feel more like a dream. Needless to say, Vanessa ended up falling asleep to this view on the bench we found (like a true bum). We stayed there for about an hour or so and by this point there was probably about 4 hours left before check in.
We got up to keep going and the good news was that we would be allowed to check in one hour early!
We start heading back, but make one last stop by the river again. There were stars that led right to the river! It was a little area where you could dip your feet into the magnificently blue Swiss water.
Mind this added detail, the time we were in Switzerland was during a heat wave. It was about 95 Fahrenheit (35 Celsius) each day. By this point in the day, we were sweaty and tired. Just imagine how excited we were to find this little jewel of a place to cool down. I took off my shoes and socks… the water… was… FREEZING!!
At 12:30, we return back to the station to pick up our luggage. Finally, we took a bus and walked a bit further to the BnB. We were very excited for the adventure we had, but my goodness, we were so so so so so happy to have arrived to the BnB to sleep.
As a child, one of my favorite books was called Bloomability. It was about a girl who gets sent to a school in Switzerland and all these adventures happen with her aunt and uncle. The book did a great job in describing the beauty of Switzerland. Ever since I read it, I’ve always wanted to go. Given the situation we were in, I’d say what we went through was definitely a Bumability.
Releasing Ropes 