Bern

The capital of Switzerland is not a holiday to be made for social currency. The pics will be mid. It’s a perfect vacation from everyone. Including yourself.

Prior to marrying into it, I’d had no curiosity about visiting Switzerland as a whole. The tiny landlocked country seemed closed off, and it didn’t seem my place to pry. Especially since, for the most part, Switzerland has only ever been the punchline to jokes about mercenary secrecy or being spiritually interchangeable with Sweden.

Everything I knew about Switzerland would have been contained in a single sentence on a Wikipedia page with multiple citations needed. Mostly my flimsy dossier had to do with fonts, Caran d’Ache color pencils, the Alps obviously, and the irrepressible urge to say “Riiiiiiiiicolaaaaaaaa” whenever the occasion arose. Also, Roger Federer.

Even still, with full-throated assurance, Switzerland is worth a visit. And particularly, Bern, the capital city of the Canton of Bern, as well as the entire country. And while this may seem akin to urging a jaunt to Sacramento (another dubious seat of power) rather than L.A. or San Francisco, Bern holds its own particular charms over a Zurich or Geneva. Though it might bear mentioning that Switzerland itself could be slotted into the state of California ten times over.

It’s true that a trip to Bern would be nothing like the preview days of Art Basel in neighboring Basel. Neither would it resemble a stint in any of the upscale resort towns made famous for skiing—Gstaad, Zermatt, Saint Moritz, Verbier, or Andermatt (where lately tariff-anxious Americans are apparently snapping up real estate in droves; a story for another time).

This is not a vacation I’d recommend for social currency. The pics will not be fire. The Alps have a tendency much like the moon to be astonishing in real life but stubbornly unremarkable in photos. Still, there is particular revelation, possibly liberation, in traveling to a locale for which few have a pre-pinned map for “the spots.” Unlike, say, the more obvious destinations, say, Tokyo or London—cities that are so thoroughly larded with clout-begetting boutiques, speakeasies, and restaurants, that it merits a spreadsheet with multiple sheets—Bern, Switzerland, calls for a gentler (complimentary) vibe.

I am the sort of traveler who enjoys a chain grocery store or farmer’s market to get a handle on a country’s personality. I am not intrepid as a matter of course. Nor am I particularly outdoorsy. Though I do like to eat. Particularly snacks. I am a city person—though a village or town will easily suffice—tending towards Town Square vacations rather than all-inclusive-resorts where unfortunately you are trapped with the worst humans on the planet, namely other people on holiday.

In many ways traveling to the city of Bern is a perfect vacation from everyone. Including yourself.

To arrive at Bern, you fly into Zurich or Geneva and it’s at the airport that the minor thrills commence. If you’re the sort to notice, you’ll locate immediately all manner of Lindt & Sprüngli chocolate for purchase. But you will also observe that the gleaming, glass confectionary shop populated with seasonal Lindor truffles (birthday cake, mangoes and cream) and trays of enrobed bon bons of varying darkness and densities, is called Lindt. And that, curiously, Sprüngli on its own is not a candy store, rather a bakery (or a konditori if we’re being precise). And this is where you’ll stop for a ham pastry or a schinkengipfeli—an unctuous paste layered amidst folds of flaky laminated yeast dough that makes for a perfect snack.

From there, you’ll take an hour-long train ride that will set you back about a hundred and thirty dollars (roundtrip) depending on what the Swiss franc is doing against the dollar, which these days would be quite a bit, and unsurprisingly the trains are mercilessly punctual.

Bern is divided into Old Town, a UNESCO heritage site with cobblestones, cool stone arcades, and a Clock Tower, beyond which you will spy the usual high street faff, your H&M, Sephora and McDonald’s, indicating the demarcation between Old Town and the rest of the city. Old Town is further divided into Upper and Lower Old Town and both are subject to different protective regulations with those living in Lower Old Town historically even speaking a different language despite the divide being traversable by a couple of staircases.

But gazing down at Old Town from an incline, the river Aare crashing against the verdant banks, tiled, pitched roofs rising amongst the trees, the jut of the ancient Clock Tower, you’re struck with a sense of uncanniness. The tableaux is so canonical in its medieval splendor, so lousy with fairytale charm, so thoroughly replicated across every Disneyland and or picture book page that the brain thrums with familiarity, flummoxed by both specificity and an oppositional sense of déjà vu.

The clouds too are worthy of notice. Cottony cumulous clouds that rival any of Hayao Miyazaki’s but it’s the Alps that are incomprehensible. Visible from anywhere and as looming and iconic as the imagination is capable of enduring. The categorical immensity of the mountains is reassuring yet stifling. And having only ever been enclosed by skyline, manmade obstructions to the horizon, hewn from steel and glass, there is something in the magnitude that is so incongruously natural that my brain attempts to escape it, deciding that it must be an immersive computer-generated landscape that requires goggles and a $50 entrance fee. Anytime I look up and out, away from my phone, pitted against the irreconcilable notion of tectonic plates colliding against each other, my comparative smallness, my relative newness is unthinkable and that is the point. The mind quiets.

Locals though mostly see the Alps as a traffic nuisance en route to Northern Italy.

Then, there is the pit full of bears.

Not a euphemism.

Live bears have been on display at the entrance to the city since the 1500s. The founding of Bern follows how Berchtold V, Duke of Zähringen, slew a bear back in the 12th century, naming the city Bern as a derivative of the word bear in Middle High German to commemorate the occasion. The black bear is the heraldic beast of Bern, appearing on tourist memorabilia as well as the flag. The brand is strong but the origin of brand is somewhat contested.

The rivaling story is much more straightforward. That Bern was named after the Italian city of Verona made famous by Romeo and Juliet, as in, “two households, both alike in dignity, in fair Verona, where we lay our scene,” since Bern is Verona in Middle High German. Even if by the same logic a youthful, star-crossed couple from warring families might have been relegated to display, destined to be ogled and fed by tourists. At least until they aged out, or ended their lives by their own maudlin hands. “From ancient grudge break to new mutiny. Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean,” and all that.

The bears used to be contained in a ditch. An unseemly trench where people would chuck down bits of food. The bears now preside in the grassy and concrete esplanade that abuts the rushing river bend and mostly they seem content if not bewilderingly literal as most traditions tend to after hundreds of years.

That’s the thing about Bern. It is old. Beautiful. And improbably tangible.

Go in summer since the temperature rarely rises north of mid-seventies and is never muggy. It is like Los Angeles on its best day. And since Bern, along with many cities of Europe, still doesn’t have air conditioning in most home and office buildings, even the most straitlaced locals make a habit of leaving their desks midday to fling off their business-casual togs for a jump into the river for a quick rinse at lunch. Some of them tote waterproof bags to swim home. They pop in and out like seals, clinging to the discreet railings that line the edges for the egress, letting the current steer their legs until their bodies are almost parallel to the river, minimizing drag which makes it easier to scramble up to dry land. This is a crucial trick any local knows and passes on to their children, along with pointers of where it’s easiest to get in and out, information that is not disseminated to unsuspecting visitors who might be more accustomed to the facsimile of a river known as the children’s water park, usually replete with lifeguards.

Here again, be forewarned, the vistas in Switzerland are very real. No matter how cute or quaint or like a screen saver it appears. Each summer sees a handful of drowning deaths since the current is powerful at various regions. It’s usually the tourists who discover the river to be lethal and this is what life is like in a country that is rarely litigious and is instead heavily insured.

The Bern tourism website states with dispassion: “It’s important to have a healthy amount of respect for the Aare and inform yourself about the possible risks beforehand.”

And this is precisely what I love about the place.

It is paradise for the self-reliant and self-actualized. You can feel it in every interaction. Specifically in the town’s terrific lack of urgency. It is on time, just not rushed. Walk into any shop and you’ll discover no sense of hierarchy. The customer is not always right, in fact the customer knows nothing and whenever you traipse to the register, especially if you insert yourself into the sightline of a sales associate, you will feel as though you are rudely interrupting a stranger. It is arbitrary on which side of the counter you find yourself. Not only because any sales associate draws a healthy salary along with all the democratic socialist bells and whistles like healthcare, retirement and generous paid vacations, but they will have had—minimally—two years of formalized training in a municipally overseen apprenticeship in order to execute their job with mulish precision and unflagging excellence.

This is just one example but in Old Town, where there is a family-owned cheese shop named Chäshütte that has been in operation since 1894, you will find a small, sandstone store, redolent with tangy aromas. And it is truly a thing of beauty to watch the swift, deft confidence of a cheese monger separating a tranche of year-old Gruyère from a wheel at the requested weight, by sight, by the gram. The scale being largely ornamental beyond the flex.

In Bern things work as they should. And this is shocking. You can drink directly from any fountain the way everyone does without any fears of contracting pink eye, black mold or Legionnaire’s. Like Italy, everything is delicious. Unlike Italy, everything is expensive. But this too is reassuring in its own right. Again when I say that to learn everything you need to know about a locale from a grocery store, I am not kidding.

Sail into Migros, Switzerland’s largest retail chain, and the only supermarket chain I’ll mention because we are a Migros family rather than a Coop family (the rival supermarket that sells alcohol and brand names), and you’ll find that the ingredients are fresh and accounted for in a particularly punctilious Swiss way.

Pick up a bag of store-bought chips and you’ll find right on the packet, the actual government name and zip code of the farm and potato farmer responsible for that particular crop of potatoes, as if to suggest that any grievances be taken up directly with Yves or Hans or Remo or whomever. It’s this transparency that’s astounding. No one needs to be doxed because they stand by their product. There are no deals. No price gouging. This to me is the diametrical opposite to vacation aboard a cruise ship. There are no demarcations of Upstairs and Downstairs. This is not just a trip, it’s time-travel, except to a place-time that has never existed in my life.

The single time I had to buy a gift bag in Bern, I’d gone to the specialty stationery shop and found a striped one for $7. Convinced I could find a less expensive option, I’d returned to Migros to discover not only the same bag but priced at exactly $7. I repeated the process at Denner, a famously more frugal grocery store.

And I would have gone to a dollar store but there are no dollar stores in town. Just the same damned bag for $7 everywhere because that is how much a superfluous luxury like a gift bag should cost when it is peddled in any store with the same rent and employees all making around the same per hour.

There is nothing to be optimized. No competitive reservation to land. The restaurants are good, resoundingly fine, though a rooftop anywhere is preferable with a slew of sausages because most of what can be bought is best cooked with as minimal interference as possible. The only hazard I’ll point out is to be hawkeyed for the casual inclusion of horse amongst ingredients in meat products if you’re arbitrarily squeamish about which four-legged creature from whence your meat is derived.

There are many reasons to travel. To spend time with family, to sight-see, to eat and drink to excess, commune with nature, to feel important or inconsequential, but for me Bern is a return to a time before phones and social media. Before capitalism became so late-staged. To cast aside hyper-vigilance and a sense of precarity for staid, sand-stoned respite. For the glory of occasional boredom, very good clouds and incomparable cheese.