Cheese, glorious cheese

To resume where I left off previously – Leandro came home and gave us (Ingo and me) big bear hugs. It’s nice to know some things never change – he’s just as happy and exuberant as ever, and just as loud and incomprehensible! Actually, when he exerts himself, he can make himself understood, as he now goes to a school where they do 3 days of immersion English, and 2 days of immersion German (Hochdeutsch, not the Swiss version). We gave him his present (Uberstix – a building toy that integrates with everything), and he and Ingo promptly settled in to build a pistol, while Uwe and Torsten played with a little wooden railway set.

Presently, Esther came home, and she and Uwe began preparing dinner – raclette! It was sooooo yummy! There were 5 different kinds of raclette cheese (including a delicious smoked one), special raclette potatoes (basically small ones), tiny pickles, pickled onions and regular onions. It made me so envious, as all we have at home for raclette is generic “French Raclette Cheese”, which you can buy at Vincenzo’s.

The next day, we went to the Paul Klee Centre and Bern with Annerose. Bern is a UNESCO World Heritage City. That just about says it all – it’s incredibly pretty, and has a large enclosure with big, fluffy, cuddly-looking brown bears. More on all that later.

The Paul Klee Centre is an art museum and learning centre dedicated to the work of Paul Klee, and is the result of a donation by his daughter of 260 works of art to the city in 1996, on the condition that the city open such a museum by 2007. It’s a very modern building, designed by Renzo Piano, that looks like 3 bumps. One bump contains a café, the entrance, and, on the lower level, the children’s museum, where kids can play around with creating art on a themed basis. The middle bump contains the main gallery on the upper level (which was unfortunately closed when we were there) and special exhibits on the lower level. The remaining bump contains research facilities and studios. It was a good exhibition; all works by Paul Klee, and very unique. Torsten was a bit tired and restive, so I put him in his sling and we viewed the works together. He was particularly fascinated by the ones with fish in them, saying “Fish” whenever he saw one. Near the end of the exhibit, he fell asleep, and so we laid him down on a bench in the entrance hall and waited for him to wake up before heading out to Bern.

Bern, as mentioned above, is a beautiful city. There were brightly coloured flags flying from the buildings all along the main street, which is lined with shops and boutiques selling really unique (but expensive) things. Our first objective was to find a place for lunch, so we parked in the underground parking by the Casino and started walking. We found a nice little brasserie by the market (which sold not only fresh and tasty-looking produce, but also all sorts of souvenirs and clothes), and had a nice lunch. Annerose had some white asparagus, I had mussels in a saffron cream sauce and fries, and Ingo had a nice entrecote of horse. Torsten loved the horse and ate 2/3 of my fries.

After lunch, we decided to go see the bears, going down the main street. It was really interesting looking in all the shops – some were nice and fairly upscale, while others were a bit more generic. Down the middle of the street, which was cobblestoned, were fountains that were originally used to water horses. Each fountain had a brightly coloured figure on a pole in the middle. Some of them were quite funny, like the man who had at his feet a helmeted rat holding a rifle. When we got to the bears, we looked at them for a bit while Torsten said “Bear” a few times, and then headed back to the car, as it was getting quite late. Our route back took us past the Munster (cathedral), the spire of which was unfortunately undergoing renovations.

Back at Uwe and Esther’s, we waited for Esther to come home from work, then drove up the mountain to a small restaurant for dinner. Outside was a small play area, accessible either by going down some rough stairs or, if you’re a kid, via the slide. Leandro went down the slide (which was fairly long and ripply with high sides), and Torsten seemed to want to try it too, so Ingo ran down to the bottom to catch him, and I sent him on his way. He loved it! Little daredevil then wanted to do it again, so we let him – then diverted his mind to other matters on the playground before going in for dinner. Ingo and I both had a schnitzel with noodles and potatoes baked over with cheese – a typical Swiss dish called Alplermaccaroni. Very tasty, but very filling – luckily, we had Torsten there to help us out. Lately, he’s been eating constantly, so he helped put a considerable dent in the meal. Then, after we got back to Uwe and Esther’s, he “helped” Ingo to eat some ice cream – Ingo actually didn’t manage to have ANY of the three small scoops on his plate!

Today was laundry day, so we stayed in. Annerose left by train at midday, and we took a short walk down to the store to buy stuff for lunch (I’ve been craving fresh fruits and vegetables, as we haven’t had much in the last few days). At the store, they had some tiny grocery carts for kids to push, so we put our groceries in there and let Torsten push. He was hilarious, tooling around the grocery store – every time we’d put a hand on the cart to steer it, he’d push us away. Nothing much else happening today, but tomorrow we’ll likely drive to Basel to see what there is to see there. It’s nice to have a day just doing nothing, though! Well, apart from making sure we have enough clean clothes to last the rest of the trip.