More Bernese Oddities

San Francisco Snail Mail moved its offices to Bern and Amsterdam. Some asked us to rename the blog to "Bamsterdam." Thanks for the suggestion; we're still deliberating it. 

Now that it's summer, we decided to stay in sunny Switzerland for a while. Sorry, Amsterdam, it's not that we don't like your weekends; it's just that your weather is a too unreliable - or it's reliably rainy. 

(The Alps seen from the Gurten.)

We're getting more and more exposed to the local charms of Bern. So let me tell you a bit more about Bernese oddities this time. 

(We haven't figured out yet what this sign means.)

One of my Swiss colleagues told me a cute story. She was complaining about the Swiss like a native is allowed to complain about her home country. She was theorizing that the Swiss in the valleys are more narrow-minded because they are stuck in between two mountains just and they can't see very far -- literally. One of her friends used to teach at a little school in a valley in the Bernese Alps. The teacher must be very old by now because the story plays in the 1950s. She had a hundred-year old map in her class and submitted a request to the school board for a new map. She thought she was making a strong argument when she mentioned all the changes that had taken place in Europe over the last decades. The board looked at her request, pondered her European arguments and responded kindly: "We don't need a new map. Do you really think our kids will be going to that Europe you are talking about?"

(The Swiss (con-)federal Parliament is in Bern.)

One of the upsides of things being small-scale is that people trust you. You don't need to cement your bike in a block of concrete and lock it up with a 30-pound lock like in Amsterdam. You just use a little clasp in the form of a pigtail to scare off local thieves. When we initially moved here, the mover - the sweet one about whom I've told you before - said: "Be careful in Bern. Some people even lock their bikes when they put them in front of their building." Ah, there is some serious crime going on in Bern!