I woke up and made friends with the Finnish girl, Marve, in the bed next to mine. We made plans with the couple from South Carolina to go to a market and buy breakfast. At some point on the trip to the market, we lost the South Carolinans and the two of us remaining returned to the hostel to eat our newly purchased bread and cheese.
In the common room we met a girl from Chile, Ori, and after breakfast, the three of us went to Einstein’s apartment/museum with a stop at H&M so I could buy a jacket/windbreaker. It turn out Einstein lived in Bern for some time and enjoyed his stay here. On the tour of the apartment, I learned Einstein was one bizarre guy. He had an affair with his cousin and divorced his wife to marry said cousin. After Einstein’s apartment, I walked back to the hostel and Marve and Ori walked to another Einstein museum. Back at the hostel, I ran into the Chicagoans and we said goodbye to each other before they took the train to Zurich.
When Ori and Marve got back to the hostel, we made a run to the supermarket to buy ingredients for our delicious pasta and brie lunch. Over lunch we decided this was such a good idea we should do this for dinner as well. This meant going out to the supermarket we had just returned from and buying everything we needed before 6. On a side note, this has been some of the best and cheapest food I have eaten here. I highly recommend communal food shopping for meals when staying in a hostel.
That afternoon we rented bikes, free in Bern for the first 4 hours, and explored the cities many sights. We rode over one of Bern’s scenic bridges to the bear habitat and took some amazing photographs of two bear cubs trying to pull down a tree so they could reach the leaves on top. They had no such luck while we were there. Next stop was the rose garden, and then back through the city and over another bridge to a nature preserve with some of the most beautiful woods I’ve ever seen.
After we returned the bikes, the three of us walked back to the hostel and made pasta for dinner. I edited pictures after dinner and went to bed soon after, in preparation for a long and bizarre day of traveling tomorrow.
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