After two beautiful days in Strasbourg we used the regional transportation to reach Switzerland and finally Bern as an excellent middle-stop in our journey to Milan. We were on a little rush, since the plan was to only stay for one night rather than the usual two nights. This was because I had some work to do, which would occupy the second day.
Starting from the youth hostel Bern we immediately rushed to the Federal Palace because it was on our way anyways and offered the beautiful view you can see in the panorama picture i shot near it as shown below.
Next up, I wanted to get a feeling for the city so we just roamed around looking at some wells with interesting figures. In the lower left you can see the 'Gerechtigkeitsbrunnen' (Justice Fountain), which reminded me of the famous 'Justitia'. In the lower right the 'Kindlifresserbrunnen' (Child Eater) is shown. Quite an interesting appearance - with no definite meaning being discernible.
Finally, we also visited the bear park - tough I don't have any pictures worth showing - and a exhibition on Albert Einstein. Most interestingly you could see his report card. This included some 6-grades, which are usually considered bad when interpreting it in the German grading system. Some people thus claim Einstein being bad at some subjects, but some guide at the exhibition told us that the report used an inverted scale and 6 is actually a good grade.
The exhibition also contained detailed descriptions of Einsteins special and general relativity theory. I was stunned at all the details we have about this persons life and letters that he received from and to people in the world.
With a rainy sky but not-so-rainy mood we went back to the youth hostel.
During that time I received a weird notification about our next stay. The stay wanted to confirm our booking (via a booking portal) and needs some details from me. Ok.. fine.. I guess. Some do need an additional telephone number so I thought. But as i look deeper into the message I firstly saw it diverging into Italian (remember - our next stop is Milan) and then asking for my credit card information. Both aspects are, on its own not that abnormal. But in combination I decided against giving strangers the details on the back of my credit card.
Quick side note and PSA: Everyone with the front side and back side information of your credit card has FULL access and can for example book hotels or buy stuff from Amazon.
Conversely this meant that the original booking in Milan was now cancelled (for the better as I later saw in the booking reviews). Keep this in mind for part 3 - Milan.
