Saturday, July 23, 2011 Room 320, Youth Hostel, Bern, Switzerland 8:18 PM
It has been a long day - not by hours, but by the sheer amount of stuff we did today. Seriously, I've had longer-houred days at home where I've done far less stuff.
Today, I woke up at around 8:15 (others in the group woke up earlier) and was changed and ready to eat by 8:30. For breakfast, I had a whole-grain (I think) chocolate cereal with milk and a cup of milk/ coffee/ chocolate-ness (I had about three of those). I also had bread with cherry jam.
After breakfast, we went to Parliament to book a tour for later in the day. Then we made our way (slowly) to the Cathedral. We were slowed down by the cool shops (we didn't buy anything).
The cathedral was really cool. Since it was built in like the thirteenth century, it's freaking GINORMOUS adn there are a bunch of religious symbols carved into the stones and sculputres and ginormously huge stained glass windows. The windows sort of told a story, but not entirely - there were a bunch of small groups of scenes within each window.
The setup of the sanctuary was also different from where I go to church - there was a baptism thing in front, a pulpit mounted on a pole in the middle-ish, and the organ mounted in the back of the place. It's hard to explain, so this merits a diagram of the place (bird's-eye view).
*not sure how to do this, so I'm going to go with not doing it*
It was really cool. that is a really lame drawing, by the way, and it is NOT DRAWN TO SCALE. The blocks are columns and the lines are dores. And by doors I mean pews. There was also a sculpture of a dying Jesus (that had holes in his feet... as in the person who did the sculpture decided that Jesus would be dying and bleeding from foot wounds) and a depressed Mary Mother near the front of the place.
After we left, we learned some cool stuff about this supermassive door sculpture that was in front of (and by 'in front of,' I mean 'around') the door. There were angels, disciples, virgins (smart and foolish), sinners, winners, apostles, church-door-carving-designers, more angels, some demons/ imps, a drumming demon, and the Archangel Michael (who carried a sword and scales for judgement (I assume) and looked like Joan of Arc since he had hair that looked like a girl's and a face to match). I'm pretty sure there was some sort of connective thread, but I'm not entirely sure what that thread was. Let's just say the common thread was a religious theme to adorn a church door. Also, there were some cool gargoyles around the upper perimeter of the cathedral. I can't explain their exactl location, but it ws kind of above the door but close enough to take photos of them.
After we left the cathedral, we went slowly meandering towards a clock tower that apparently had a 'show' that started at five to noon. While we were meandering, we were also sort of window shopping. I spotted a yarn place and I really wanted to go in, but we only had ten minutes until the show, so I didn't, which made me VERY sad. Mostly because when we finally got around to going back, it had been closed for half an hour. Mom insists that it's not a big deal, but honestly, I'm probably never going to get another chance to get yarn from Switzerland.
Anyway, enogh about yarn.
By the way, it was NOT worth msising the yarn to see the clock. Some bears on a wheel turned around, an impish statue banged a gon, and a bearded stature flipped an hourglass and opened his mouth. The end. It was really boring and I could have gotten some cool Swiss yarn (or I could have found out that they're charging far too much for synthetic wool in lame colors. Either one. Just saying.) while were were on the street, but we didn't stay on that half of the street.
Instead, we passed through the archway under the clock and proceeded into the snazziest McDonald's I have ever seen in my life. I mean, I'm talking all windows, carpeted floors, TWO LEVELS, flat-screened TVs, and a winding iron staircase between the two levels. We all had to pee, which is why we were there, but Mom had to get a coffee in order to get us into the bathroom.
After our bathroom break, we got lunch. I had pizza.
But just BEFORE lunch we saw some fountains, including one of an ogre eating babies.
Allison deemed it inappropriate, but hey, it's an ogre! Ogres in Europe are notorious for their consumption of underage kids! *I'm pretty sure I made that up* Besides, there wasn't any blood or anyhting, just some miserable-looking kids and an ogre holding an infant with the kid's head in his mouth. Because of this, Allison declared this 500-year-old fountain to be a public display of vulgarity and was ready to start a petition for its removal.
Anyway, after lunch, we went and did some browsing, and I got theser really cool trousers and a skirt/ dress. Then we toured Parliament, which was cool, and then we went to see some bears and then we went to dinner (which was really good), and now we're here at the hostel. Before Parliament, Mom sorted out train tickets for Monday.
And now I'm gonna take a shower. Bye.
