Day 16 – Feel the Bern
Today I awoke later than usual and well rested. That was only the beginning of a very nice morning. Jeanne and Jean-Marc prepared breakfast with freshly squeezed juice, an assortment of cheeses, cherries from their garden and a shot of expresso. It was served on a big wooden table on the veranda, under sunny blue skies. We discussed family, kids, religion, Putin, Trump, racism, football, travels, Les Îles de la Madeleine, high-speed trains… Two hours flew by in no time. It was so nice to spend time with these wonderful people. I didn’t really want to leave. Hopefully our path will cross again.
But my next stop was awaiting. Bern was just 40 km away. After I left Salavaux, the avantpost of the French part of the country, it didn’t take long to notice the change in architecture: typical German houses sprung up along the road. The weather was turning to the worst so I did a blitzkrieg and less than two hours later I was in Bern’s Altstadt, another UNESCO heritage site. The rain was coming and going, so I decided to go to my host’s place.
Lena waved me in from the window of her apartment when I almost missed the address. After I changed we went back to the city center, where we watched a concert in support of the refugees. I ate “biological”, as the seller called it, burger. Then there was a football match on a big TV under not-so-blue skies. These days football is unavoidable. I almost went with Lena to a “poesie slam”, some sort of improv competition, the final of which was tonight. However, if I can barely understand spoken French, German is the same as Chinese to me, so I opted out.
Today in numbers:
39 km – distance covered
2h1m – riding time
3.1 kg – I lost since the beginning of the trip
1.50 CHF – an average price of one liter of gasoline, or $5.70 a gallon. Luckily I fuel myself with carbohydrates, a cheaper option
