Ciao Italia, Guten Tag Helvetia

May Day found me heading north through the Alps into Switzerland and leaving my solo traveling behind. Somehow I ended up sitting facing the wrong direction on a bouncy, twisting train from Como to Zurich. Ooooh queasy feeling, I even had to take a gravol. My ears were popping from climbing into the mountains and the guy across from me wasn’t helping talking non stop on his phone in Arabic. Luckily a lot of people got off in Lugano so I was able to switch seats then and face the right direction with no one around me.

When I arrived in Zurich three hours later I was feeling much better and was happy to see Edeana waiting out on the platform. We soon caught the train to Murten, changing in Bern.

Murten

Murten is a beautiful Medieval town on Lake Murten not far from the French part of Switzerland. We stayed at the Hotel Ringmauer. Ringmauer is German for ramparts, and Murten is a walled town with old ramparts on top of half the walls.

Tea rooms, backereis and konditereis abound on Murten’s main street with windows filled with tortes, cakes and pastries. When we stopped for tea we felt we should try the local, rather plain looking, specialty called nidelcheuche, cake with a layer of custard on top. Think we should have gone for something a little more enticing. It tasted about as exciting as it looks.

Avenches

Day two in Switzerland and we traveled 5 minutes down the rail line to Avenches in the French region for our tour of the Roman ruins of Aventicum. In the museum there is the most brilliant gold bust of Marcus Aurelius but alas it is only a copy because they don’t have enough security to guard it here. The original is in a bank vault in Lausanne.

Another busy little piece was a bronze votive statue of a hand. FYI – there is a pinecone on the thumb, a bust of the god Sabazius on the inside between index finger and middle finger, a bust of Mercury between the bent ring finger and the little finger. A twig is draped along the right outer side of the hand and the wrist is decorated with a small bell and a snake. On the exterior of the hand there is a bust of Cybele between the thumb and the index finger, a bust of Bacchus between the index finger and the middle finger and a ram’s head between the ring finger and the little finger. The back of the hand shows a lizard, a pottery vessel, a tortoise and a frog. A reclining woman holding a child is depicted at the lower end of the wrist. Whew!

I have never seen anything like it before. It is about the size of an actual hand and it rotates around so you can see all the sides.

Avenches had the remains of a Roman amphitheatre, theatre, sanctuary, wall gate and baths. There were also little bits of Roman remains throughout this nice little town.

We had a great lunch (French 4 course meal – soup, salad, fish and vegetables and fruit salad for 15 francs – a good deal) and did some shopping as well. Edeana bought some rubber boots that look like high top runners. BTW Adele (sister) they also like to celebrate other cultures here as well.

After another night in Murten, we took the train back to Bern to spend the morning.

Bern

We took advantage of our Swiss Pass travel day to get into the History Museum there for free. There is a permanent exhibition about Albert Einstein there. He lived there in the 1920s when he came up with the theory of relativity. Very interesting. The museum also gave a history of Bern, including their Roman and Medieval pasts.

After lunch at the museum bistro we headed off into the Alps to spend the night in Interlaken. Time for some Swiss fondue and beer. Cheese and bread – what would travellers in Europe eat if these didn’t exist? I’d like to know!!!

Our night in Interlaken was a change of the itinerary courtesy of Edeana. We were supposed to spend 2 nights in Gimmelwald but she booked the wrong dates and we had no place for Saturday night and 2 places booked for Monday. Little did I know I would soon be so grateful for this mixup!

Now here it is your moment of mosaic. Not Ravenna! We are now among the Romans of Gaul and this mosaic was hanging in the Bern museum bistro unlabelled but you’ll recognize as Roman (surely by now you will!).