Day 3 (October 3, 2008)

At breakfast we had Birchermüesli, croissants, homemade jelly, an assortment of cheese (Berner Alpkäse, Emmentaler, Tilsiter, a few varieties of Tommes), and that famous strong Swiss coffee with a thick brown foamy crema layer on top. It is the kind of crema that makes you believe its well worth replacing the automatic drip machine at home with a Swiss Jura Impressa X-line coffee machine; although, to do so would probably mean selling the car.

After breakfast, we climbed the 344 steps to the top of the tower of Bern's Gothic cathedral. From the top you can see a beautiful panorama of the entire old city. Finally, a payoff for all those 5:30AM trips to the gym. After the climb down, we took a quick walk through of the cathedral. The dance of death stain glass that was created during the plague is very powerful. The cathedral took centuries to build, and has an amazing history.

After the cathedral, we went to Annemarie, and Karl's house. Also present were Fely, Suzie, and Doris. Visiting all of them was one of the major highlights of our trip. Annemarie and Karl have a wonderful house with a large Swiss style garden filled with special fruit trees, flowers and plants. The rest of the day was a wonderful party filled with conversation that went on for hours. At the end of the day, we watched the movie "Die Herbstzeitlosen" a very funny Swiss movie about an elderly women who decides to open a lingerie shop in the very conservative farming village of Traub. Annemarie translated the movie for us scene by scene, and then Karl gave us a candle light concert playing his "Hammered Dulcimer". He played for us some of the Swiss folk music he played, with his family, on the "Die Herbstzeitlosen" movie sound track. We then watched an interview with Karl that is one of the extra features on the movie's DVD. Of course, our favorite part of the movie was Karl's music, but the comedy was also very good.