DAY 33 -13.7.2006

What is great about Swizerland is that it's so small country that distances between major cities are very short. We were driving to the capital Bern from Interlaken and it was only 60km away. But that is what our plans for Swizerland was all about: relaxing in beautiful scenery and taking a break from all that driving.

But now we had arrived in the city where Albert Einstein had conceived the theory of general relativity. Bern is the capital of Swizerland with only 124 000 inhabitants. After all the wooden houses burnt down in 1405, the city was rebuilt of sandstone and from that time it has remained unchanged to the present day. The sandstone buildings give Bern a prestigious look. When you walk the streets it feels like you've gone back in time. In the main walking street there's a sign to this one apartment where Einstein lived for few years. We didn't want to pay for the few euros to get in there. It's not like Einstein was our childhood hero:)

We ate a little breakfast at Bern's university as we had to charge the batteries of our cameras. After that we continued our walking around the centrum. We stopped at every stop which the lady in reception had marked in our map. They say Bern is Europe's most flower decorated city so we wanted to check both the botanical and rose garden. Speaking of flowers, our allergic reactions were not bothering in Bern... weird. We took a little nap in the rose garden. After that we went to this bear park, but oops... we had slept a bit too long missing the bears:( Name Bern comes from the German word meaning "bear", so that is the reason why they have a bear park.

So after a little disappointment and small rainstorm we returned to our car. We were going to Geneve, our last stop in Swizerland. It was almost a 2-hour drive there. On our way we crossed the 7000 km milestone. Once we got to Geneve, we left our car next to the lake and went for a late night swim. After we had tested the water of lake Geneve, we returned to our car and started cooking Finnish pea soup that we had brought from home. Mmm... delicious as always:) Now we were ready for sleep.