The Sun BabelFish Blog
Don't panic !
cycling to Bern, Switzerland
Eleven days ago, on Saturday 17 September, I took my leave of Zürich and cycled
the 150 km to Bern under a cold gray sky. On arriving I found a town that feels very different.
Bern, the politial capital of Switzerland is a lot older and less well looked after. It feels a little dirtier,
and a bit of a mess. This is in part due to the serious construction work going on in the historic
center of town, a Unesco World Heritage Site,
where all the roads are being dug up to replace the aging gas pipes that had caused
one death a few years ago due to a leakage which led to an explosion. But is is also because I
ended up seeing the town a lot at night, when the cheap neon lit signs of the shops that
range the historic center of town overwhelm the eye. It is a pitty to show such a beautiful
architecture in such bad light. One gets used to everything
when one lives among it, I suppose. Sometimes it needs an accident like the severe electricity shortages that
hit San Francisco in 2001. I remember one of these forcing me out of my office one night to see
a magically transformed candle lit San Francisco. Perhap there should be no electricity days, or at
least evenings, to help the inhabitants re-adjust their eye.
Posted at 12:41AM Sep 28, 2005 [permalink/trackback] by Henry Story in travel | Comments[0]
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