Bern Switzerland

We are back from our whirlwind Spring Break Trip!  9 days of Spanish heaven!  Now laundry grocery shopping, cleaning sorting, and resting have consumed our lives….as well as baseball, piano, homework, and work.  I can’t wait to blog our Spain trip, but before I can tell you that story I must first tell you this one…..
Our friends Jeannie and Paul approached us back at Christmas time and asked if we wanted to do a kid swap for an over night get away for the adults.  We were on aboard with this idea, and watched their kids during Christmas vacation so they could go over night to Nancy France which is known for their gourmet food.  So we finally found a weekend that we could take our turn and decided on Bern Switzerland for our get away.  It is about four hours away and has the Bern Switzerland Temple which was the first temple in Europe.  We thought it would be cool to see Switzerland as well as we needed to go to the temple since we haven’t been since moving here (I know….don’t judge us).  We stayed in the temple housing which was cheap and clean, and doesn’t have much else going for it, but cheap and clean are pretty big on my list:)  It felt like we were back in the dorms at BYU except it was more narrow, crazy right?  I knew I loved Switzerland as soon as I got a view of this:
It was a gorgeous day when we pulled into Zollikofen which is the little town where the temple is located just outside of Bern. 
 
As we were driving around exploring the area and scenery we suddenly ended up downtown Bern.  We had no idea it was so close to the temple!  So we took the opportunity to see the old bear habitat and the new one below which is right in the city where everyone can watch the bears interact and play with each other.  Bern has been home to bears for years and they have become a symbol of this city.   It is right along the Aare River which arches around the old city of Bern like a horse shoe.  Bern is the Capital city of Switzerland.  It is where Albert Einstein worked, the Toblerone chocolate bar is made, and Emmental cheese, known as Swiss Cheese, became famous. 
After a sneak peak of downtown Bern, we cruised back up to the temple for the 7pm session.  There were Spanish, German, French, Italian, and English speakers in this session.  The workers had to read off a sheet of translations!  It felt great to be back at the temple.  After a great night’s sleep in our "plush" hotel we headed downtown to take in Bern. 
This building and parking area around it were very interesting.  Its art in some form I suppose. 


Bern is so pituresque with the Aare river and bridges all along it to cross into the old city.  I read somewhere that there are 18 bridges in Bern. 

This downtown shopping area is known for these arches and sidewalks under them.  It allows for shopping and walking in all kinds of weather. 

Of course every good European city has a grand cathedral so we made our way to Bern’s to take a gander. 

The stained glass was the finest I’ve seen. 
 

We found this outdoor market with lots of samples.  It was like a European Costco.  We had ham, olives, cheeses, and breads.  And then we purchased one of these yummy things up above.  Then we immediately went back for another!  It was covered with cream and sugar. 

On our way home we stopped at Cora in France to buy some Speculoos (like six jars)  its like cookie peanut butter you can only get in France that we are way addicted to.  Anyway, I called Jeannie to let her know we were almost home and then she said, “I need to talk to you about a little incident that happened today”.  Seems that Jake changed his shirt threw it behind him put on a short sleeve shirt, shut his door and went out to play.  Unbeknownst to him, the shirt landed on his lamp and eventually caught on fire.  Everyone was outside playing (even Jeannie), except for Hanna and Becky, their oldest daughter, who heard the fire alarm go off.  Hanna was really composed and responsible through it all.  She grabbed the fire extinguisher (thank you Carter who had showed her where it was a week earlier), and handed it to Jeannie who ran up and put the fire out.  Hanna gathered all the kids with Becky and they headed to safety across the street.  Luckily, Jake’s room was spared major damage as well as the rest of the house.  Thankfully his curtains did not catch on fire.  Jeannie (bless her heart), after putting out the fire with the extinguisher, then got to deal with the after math of cleaning up all the mess and washing numerous toys, legos, etc. in the bathtub.  What a blessing……it could have been so much worse.  I think this was a direct blessing from attending the temple the night before.  We had to air out Jake’s room almost a week, wash all of his clothes,  curtains, and bedding, scrub his furniture and clean out the vacuum used to vacuum everything up from head to toe.  There is still a faint smell of smoke in his room to this day!  Jake learned that even though it was an accident, he still had to help clean things and make things right again.  I guess we’ll see if the Kartchner’s ever want to do a trade again, we are apparently a lot of work to take care of!!