Switzerland and Weeklies!

For our Swiss day trip, we visited Bern. It was about an hour away by train (the European public transportation system is amazing!) and is the capital of Switzerland. While in Bern, we had so much fun! First, we went to the Einstein Haus, a museum about Albert Einstein located in the apartment he lived in with his wife for two years while in Bern. The museum basically told the entire history of Einstein; he had such an interesting life. Among other things, I learned that he didn't win the Nobel Prize for the Theory of Relativity, but rather for discovering the photoelectric effect. Unfortunately, I still don't exactly understand what that is.
After the Einstein Haus, we went to Barengraben, the bear pit which Bern is famous for. The bear we saw was named Bjork. Right next to the pit is a tourist center, which plays short movies about the history of Bern. From the video, we learned about everything from Napoleon's conquest of Bern to the chaos caused when he removed the bears from the bear pit (the bears of Bern are very iconic, the city's shield even features a bear). Also while in Bern, we saw the large clock tower that helped Einstein discover the Theory of Relativity, the Parliament and water jets, many fountains, and small stores.

To see Switzerland's schools, we spent half a day at our hosts' high school visiting her classes. Since it's an international school, it was interesting to hear not only how many countries various students had lived in and came from, but also how many languages people speak. There are people who speak over five languages fluently! It's amazing! Another interesting thing for us was having to be awake and functioning by 8 a.m. for school. After the English teacher suggested we take notes on the lecture, I realized that I'd gotten pretty out of practice with it. Still, it was nice to hear English being spoken everywhere, since it seems to be the main common language at the school.


Food of the Week



Chocolate! What else? We are in Switzerland after all...


Word of the Week

entschuldigung - sorry or excuse me
(ent-shul-di-gung)

Yes, it's hard to pronounce, but we often used it to get by a crowd of people on the tram or apologize after stepping on their foot.

In Basel (where we are staying), they speak Swiss German. This is different from High ("Regular") German, particularly because it isn't really a set written language of it, so spelling differs. The Swiss are very nationalistic, though so they usually would rather English than High German. However, the languages do share many similar words, as both are dialects of German.


Place of the Week



Bern! It was great there! You can read more about it farther up in this post. This particular picture is of the Zytglogge, which means clock tower.


Photo of the Week



On our first day in Basel, our host showed us this wall. Although it looks like graffiti, the city actually commissioned an artist to make this mural on a building wall. In case you can't tell by the picture, it shows many of the rock and roll greats in some of their most iconic poses as well as various band logos. Since we love rock and roll music, we really liked this wall.