Vsit to Bern

On the way back from visiting Ralph and Kali in Bleienbach, we stopped in Bern which is the capital of the Swiss Federation. It's a really cool old city, about 2 hours drive from Geneva.

We were there on a Sunday, so pretty much everything was closed, but even so, the streets were full of visitors. We only planned to be there for a few hours so we decided to hit the most famous spots in Bern.  I did a bit of research and found out that Bern was really famous for its bear pits.

"Bear pits???" you ask... Why yes.
Back in the medieval times the city kept a bunch of brown bears in dug out pits in the middle of the city. They were captured during hunts, then used for entertainment of the people and over time they became the symbol of the city.

Even the name Bern, comes from the German word 'baeren' which means 'bears'.

Throughout the ages the bears were moved from place to place around the city, as the place grew and developed. At one point, during Napoleonic wars, the French army even marched in and plundered the rich city, stole the bears and took them to Paris.

The bears lived in pretty horrible conditions up until the 20th century, until sometime in the 70s the city created a nice nature preserve for them on the hillside along the river, where now they have trees, grass, rocks to climb over, a large pool to swim in and I guess they are fairly happy. We saw 4 of them. A humongous male, who lives in a gated section all by himself, probably to prevent ny aggression. Then there was a large female and two younger bears, but not cubs. They seemed pretty happy frolicking around the preserve, chomping on celery and carrots and messing with each other (the two little ones). Here are some pics:
This is the big lazy dude bear...

This one was the lady bear...

 And here are the baby bears...

 And here is a couple pics of the previous bear pit which was used up to about the 70s.

After visiting the bear pit, we went up to the top of the city hill to a lovely Rose Garden (you get a fantastic view of the entire city from there) and then we finally got back on the road to go home.

What a fun weekend!