April 10, Barcelona, overnight train to Bern
Sunday morning I woke up with every desire to leave the hot, dirty hostel as soon as possible, but I had until 7:30 before I could get on the train to Bern Switzerland I didn’t want to be out all day. I “enjoyed” a free breakfast at the hostel – it was this pre-toasted bread bits, kinda like malbotoast, with strawberry jam, and coffee out of a juice cup. The things of magic. Well hey, I didn’t have to pay for it so it wasn’t that bad.
I checked my luggage into the luggage room at the hostel because I did some researching and found out that the train station I would be departing from did not in fact have a luggage check, or lockers. This was also the path of least resistance.
I headed out of the hostel around 11:30 and headed straight in one direction, I was headed to the Barcelona Aquarium! I was so excited about this. I kind of felt like a dork going to the aquarium all by myself but I don’t really care. I walked in the summer sun, sat on the pier, before crossing the famous pedestrian bridge to get to the aquarium.
The aquarium did not disappoint and although there were many families with small kids there were equal amount of people my age and older taking in the fun. They had all sorts of things. It was hilarious to watch the little kids up against the glass screaming every time a shark would swim by. It was also hugely entertaining to stand by the tank that had clown fish in it and hear all the little kids yelling “NEMO!! NEMO!” in their various accents.
The aquarium also had a tunnel aquarium. It was really neat. I loved it. Sharks, sting rays, other giant fish that if I saw swimming by me in nature I would be scared. Haha. They also had another area where they had penguins. I loved it. I loved it a lot.
I left and enjoyed a hot dog on the steps outside; from there I walked to the beach. Figured I should enjoy some sitting in the sun before I leave. The walk to the beach was long but nice. It definitely wasn’t as warm on Sunday as it had been, previously standing in the sun had me sweating, that kind of heat. This was just a nice warm summer day.
I sat on the edge of the sidewalk and the sand for some time before this Spanish guy sat down to talk to me, which was fine until he started asking me if I ever dated Spanish guys, he then informed me he dated many American girls because he liked how they were different. His lack of English skills proved otherwise. I told him it was 3pm and I was due to meet my mother. Ugh.
I walked back towards the hostel. For some reason, my upcoming journey that evening had me thinking that going too far would be a bad idea. I walked around a bit more, eventually finding an internet café, at which time I updated this here blog, so you are familiar with that. After I left I walked to the Hard Rock Café because as silly as that place is it always has a way of drawing me in. I also liked the idea of having a good meal before I got on an overnight train that went over my dinnertime.
From there I walked to Starbucks because once you’ve given in once, it is so much easier to do it again and lets be honest, Grande Lattes from Starbucks are fabulous and I can milk one of those for hours. It is so hard to find a proper, large coffee anywhere in Europe. Also the thought of checking my phone on the web before I departed pleased me.
From there I went and grabbed my stuff from my hostel, changed my clothes and made my way to the train station to board my 13 hour train from Barcelona to Bern.
I was quite pleased with the seats on the train that I got, well I was pleased until I actually tried to sleep on it. They give you lots of room and they do recline fairly far back but they do so in a way that makes you feel like you are sliding off the chair the whole time.
I’d like to say the ride was uneventful but we were stopped by customs and boarder control not once, or twice, but three times. The first time I was woken up by the French police shining their flashlight in my eyes asking me for my passport. Everything was fine with me, obviously, no problem letting a young, female Canadian, into your country, but as for the Nigerian men without passports, well that was a different story. They were questioned, one man was even taken off the train and not allowed to continue. Then when we were leaving France they were back on the train, this time questioning another Nigerian man, I’m pretty sure he was escorted off the train.
Lastly, and certainly most notably, was the Swiss boarder control. I got smiles and welcomes when they found out I was from Canada, but the Nigerian woman traveling with her two young children were not so lucky. In a search that made my train an hour late, there was a drug sniffing dog, drug tests, luggage was searched, and finally the lady was taken off the train. It was wild. Well not really that wild, but it was kind of strange. Don’t really know why she was taken off as they were speaking French the whole time.
Anyways I arrived in Bern an hour late.
April 11, Bern
By the time I arrived it was about 10:00. I phoned Tess and she met me at the station, she’d taken an overnight train from Groningen and arrived at 8:00. It was nice to see a familiar face and know that traveling would once again be a combined effort.
To say I wanted a shower would be such an understatement, however we weren’t allowed to check into the hostel until 3pm – so late! So we went and dropped our bags off and did our tour of Bern for the day. But to reiterate, I felt so foul still wearing yesterdays clothes and having not washed m y face, ugh, I shudder to think.
Bern is the capital of Switzerland, but you wouldn’t know it from the atmosphere on the streets in the city centre area. It feels like a cosy little town, and looks exactly how you would expect Switzerland would look. Loved it. The sun was shining and it was supposed to be the nicest weather we would have for the week so we thought we should take advantage of it. We started with a walk by the river. Bern has huge hills with huge, tall bridges, it looks very majestic.
We walked by the Einstein museum, around the old town area, the cathedral, parliament, town hall, we had lunch in a park overlooking the river. Oh the river. The water in the rivers in Switzerland are so clear and blue they look like candy, or fake, or like someone has thrown in tons of crystal blue colouring. It is wonderful. The river in Bern flows so very quickly. I guess it is a thing to do to float down it, and although we considered it, it just wasn’t warm enough outside to allow for such a hilarious event.
We skipped the bear park, in favour of the tourist office to get some ideas about what we should be doing for the rest of our days here. We took our tons of pamphlets to a garden to read through, the sun was beating down on us. So nice. We wandered around the streets a little further, heading to the shopping area where I bought my new Swatch watch I’ve had my eye on. I mean, why not buy it there right?
One thing about Switzerland is that it is outrageously expensive. And I mean, we’d heard this and we were all “ya, ya, everywhere is expensive,” but, no, it really is expensive. They use the Swiss Franc, which is almost at par with the Canadian dollar, but prices are much higher than they would be at home. For example, we went into Starbucks to do a price comparison and a Venti Latte was 7.70sf. What?! Yes, and their food, to eat out is outrageous! As in, you cannot find a dish under 20sf.
We finally made it to the hostel around 5 or 6, showered (!!best ever!!), unpacked a bit, and finally set out to find something to eat around 7pm. Unfortunately for us, all the grocery stores close at 7 and there is quite literally no where cheap to eat. I understand that your average meal at McDonalds there was around 11sf.
We did the best we could to find cheap food but it came down to us splitting a pizza and a bowl of pasta (without drinks) which totalled just under 40sf. At least both dishes were delicious and very filling. Clearly we could not do that again. After dinner we did some planning for the next day but exhaustion set in and we needed bed, which we got to rather early.
As an aside, I was totally expecting much more French here, but it is mostly German with some French thrown in. huh.
