Interrail Day 17
Today we had a good ole explore of Bern! First stop - the Bear Pit! It’s literally a pit with a family of bears in it in the middle of Bern. There was only one beat out today and they were slomberin in the sun, but it was kinda cool! ((They were fixing the actual pit part, hence why the bear is in more of an enclosure but it is an actual pit!)). Next, we headed off to Einstein’s House! He lived in Bern for a few years, but it was here he wrote his Theory of Relativity! He lived in Bern with his first wife, Mileva Marity (Maric), from 1903 to 1905. His house was kinda small, and it must’ve been super crowded with him, his wife, and his child ((his oldest son was born whilst they lived here)). After we had Lunch, and we headed to the History Museum of Bern. That was creepy as HECK man. In the basement, they had all the original statues from the Bern Minster, and the lightning was quite minimal so as to avoid damaging the artefacts even more. Very very creepy. Like straight out of a weeping angels doctor who episode. As it was quite late in the day, we were the only people there too which made it more terrifying as it was SO quiet. Unfortunately the translation of the information from German-English wasn’t as good, so we got a basic description of what it was, however not much background information about it. Although, you may notice some of the statues do not have noses, and that in some cases the heads have been removed from their bodies - this was a deliberate desecration of these statues. Unfortunately there was no reason given as to why. Upstairs, there was a section on Bern up until present day. It was equally interesting. For example, Lenin himself lived in Bern whilst he was in exile. Also, the Bond Girl from Dr. No, Ursula Andress, was from Bern, as was the String Quartet from the movie “Titanic” ((you know, the ones who play as the ship is sinking...)). It also highlighted a lot of interesting facts about Switzerland’s neutrality during the war. As they were neutral, they traded equally ((or certainly were willing to trade equally)) to both “sides” of the war. During World War Two, this meant that they bought and sold a lot of stolen Jewish artefacts, particularly gold, which they then either melted down or sold for profit. Equally, it meant that they turned away a lot of refugees from invaded countries. It seems that whilst they did not want to take in refugees, particularly Jewish ones, so as not to appear to be taking sides, they were more than happy to take money and stolen goods. The main money making from the war did come from artefacts the Nazi’s stole as they surrounded Switzerland on all sides during the war, but they equally made money off of the artefacts stolen by the Allies too. Kind of grim when you see the truth, as Switzerland being neutral always seemed, certainly when I learned about the war waaaay back in school, that they had nothing to do with anyone on either side. But that’s not true at all. Quite interesting and harrowing at the same time, however I am appreciating (certainly central) Europe’s dedication to remembering and talking about the bad things they did in the past. They don’t glorify it, they retell it to make sure they remember what they did and to learn from it. There’s no point in only mentioning the good parts of history - how else are we to learn from our mistakes, and grow?













