On the road to Bern

// April 8th, 2007 // travel

The road from Lausanne to Bern is only 106 km long, so you should be able to do that in max. 2 hours while hitchhiking. But Friday, I started at 10.30 and I arrived at my host place in Bern at 18.30. That’s eight hours! What happened?

Together with hitchhiking, staying at peoples’ places is one of the best ways of traveling I think. Not only you meet new people, and have a type of interaction you cannot get otherwise, also they make you go to places or even go there with you. So on my way to Bern, the capital of Switzerland, I found myself high up in the mountains, and in a medieval town.

My host in Lausanne, Pascal, said he would bring me with his car to a rest-area on the highway to Bern. It was a very special place, famous for its great view over a lake, and the painted cows, he promised.

But before going there, we went on a huge D-tour and he took me into the Swiss mountains, tried to throw a snowball in my face from 1500 meter high, but missed and took me to this lovely town called Gruyères, very famous for its cheese and the amount of tourists that visit the place.

Gruyères is a medieval town with only a bit over 3000 inhabitants nowadays. You can walk through it in less that five minutes, if you know how to avoid bumping into tourists. Definitely worth a day-trip, and like this I had a day very nicely spent.

And of course, it seems usual already for me trip, I had not to wait long at the rest-area as I was picked up by a dad and his son who just came back snowboarding in France. They are from Bern and brought me where my host lives.