Bern, Switzerland

Bern was place I was the most excited to visit before coming on our trip. My grandma's parents both traveled to the United States from Bern. I had heard so many great things about it from my grandma, that I felt it was a place I needed to see in my lifetime. My grandma passed away a year ago, and at that time Blake and I weren't planning a trip to Europe. If I had known then, I would have asked her so many things about Bern; places to see, relatives to meet. Instead I relied on one of her photo albums from the last time she visited Bern, which was in 1983. I brought it with me on this trip and used it often to see all the places she had visited, so that I could see those places as well. It was such a great feeling to know that I was standing in the same place as she had been almost 30 years ago on her trip to Bern. Some of the things we saw while in Bern were the Bear Pits. The legend of the bear pits is that the city of Bern was given it's name back in 1191 when the first animal hunted and killed was a bear. The bear pits have been in the town since 1513, and now they're in more of a park setting rather than a pit. Other things we saw were the apartment of Albert Einstein, the town clock, the Parliament House, the Rose Garden (it didn't have any roses blooming, but it did have an amazing view of the city), and we did a session in the Bern, Switzerland Temple. We loved the food in Bern, and the people as well. The food was a lot heavier than what we had been eating in other countries, but it was so delicious.



The bear pits, minus the bears (they were in hibernation).




This is the Parliament House. My grandma had this identical picture in her photo album.