Bern is the capital city of Switzerland. It's population is only 120,000 people plus a bit of change. Basel is a beautiful city and Switzerland's third most populated with 160,000 people.
All in attendance: Eliot and Kristen
I am restless on the weekends. I feel as if every weekend spent at my home in Baden is a weekend wasted. So with another Alstom intern I met three days prior, I set out to visit Bern and Basel for sightseeing all day Saturday with promising plans to go to Zurich at night for a drum and bass show.
I'm cheating a bit to call this a "trip". It's like calling a visit to Canmore a "trip". There will probably be times where I take the train to Basel just to go to the clubs on Friday nights but honestly I'm over zealous about traveling so I'll call just about everything a trip until it gets old.
Switzerland cities are so very quaint and beautiful. They almost feels as if they're from some fairy tale story or medieval folklore. We set out and took the train from Baden to Bern which, like most things in Switzerland, felt more expensive than necessary (19 CHF with the halb-tax).
We went to all the central and cheap sites in Bern. We lucked out because there was a very big outdoor market fill with all these unique flowers, fruits, vegetables and handcrafts (all very expensive, of course) right outside of the Bundeshaus (parliament building).
We took pictures of the lovely view of Bern right outside parliament and then went walking around Old Town. We went to the Einsteinhaus, a very small museum in Einstein's old flat. Entrance was 4.50 CHF for students and I'm still debating whether it was worthwhile. I feel that the same information could've been gained with a few minutes spent on wikipedia.Bern is the picturesque and quintessential Swiss town. The buildings are adorable and they seem to really like their clock tower and really like their bears. There is a place where you can see actual bears but Eliot didn't want to spend time watching animals in captivity and I felt there were better things to do than see bears in a pit. Then after visiting the Rosengarten (Bern's version of the Crescent Heights view) and a lunch is a nice sit down Thai restaurant (my first sit-down meal in Switzerland), we headed to Basel and spent another 19CHF on a train.
I was a bit annoyed that we didn't think to take the train to Basel first then Bern (Baden to Basel is 13 CHF) but that oversight turned out to be a lucky mistake because of what we found in Basel that afternoon.
We still don't quite understand what event was going on but we managed to come to Basel during an annual free music event. Free occurrences in Switzerland are few and far in between so we felt very lucky. There was a rock stage, a stage with soft indie music and then a jungle stage.
I feel like every time I encounter a DJ booth in a random outdoor location, it's just part of Shambhala's magic providing me with good music and good people.
The show was held in a club called "Thai Thai Club". The stage was downstairs and you had to walk through strange concrete-like tunnels before getting to it. Everything from the crowd to the obscure venue felt like a piece of home. Bryan, the event promoter, told me at Netsky that drum and bass was the universal language and it really is. Perfect end to the day!
