Bern: A visit to a relative of a friend from high school, also fondue

Note: These photos are not in order as I would have intended. but moving them is too much of a hassle right now. In the future, I think I will set up a Flickr account to handle all of my photos from now on.

Way back when in spring of 2007, when we first conceived the idea of traveling to europe the plan was simple enough.

1. Go to Germany and win gold at the olympics(did that)

2. Have lots of beer and relax(still doing that)

3. Find work in Switzerland and work for a year, learning from the best. (Ah, not so much)

As it turned out, Switzerland is a hard country to get work visa's from. If you dont already have work lined up, you're out of luck. On top of that, you have to apply for the visa in your home country, which makes finding good work that much harder. We did try however, in spite of all this, and who better to call than a member of the Canadian embassy? A good friend of mine happend to have an aunt stationed in Bern, the swiss capital, so we gave it a shot. It didn't pan out.

But we did manage to find a new friend in Switzerland, so at least it was not completely fruitless. She was also kind enough to let us stay with her while we were there, which we were very grateful for. The town of Bern was actually quite nice. We managed to go to the market and have some awesome mexican food, as well as taking in all the local produce. It never ceases to amaze me the quality of all the markets here. They make the local Edmonton markets look silly.

One of the local attractions in Bern is their town mascot: the bear. To celebrate their town animal, they decided to have a bear pit, where tourists could come and feed the bears rolls and essentiall anything they wanted to throw in the pit. It's really sad when you think about it and even more depressing when you see it. Essentially, people hover over the rails hoping the bear will walk below them and eat whatever they toss in. Even more sad is the fact that there used to be more than just one bear in that cramped pit, but the rest of them died. Shitty.

After a couple of days of mountains and walking through town, we decided that it was time to give something back to our hosts. Being chefs, the natural thing to do was simple: cook dinner. An afternoon of shopping and cooking resulted in the following menu:

Tomato and Buffalo Mozzarella Salad

Arugala and Bresaola

Balsamic vinaigrette

Roasted Cauliflower soup

Mustard seed and Herb Crust Veal Loin

Roasted Potatoes and Mixed Peppers

Braised Leeks and Fennel

Mushroom, Herb and Cream Sauce

Before leaving Switzerland all together, we were determined to have some authentic fondue. There are mixed stories on where fondue was invented so we chose the town that was closest: Fribourg. I think a good way to describe how good the fondue is would be to say that I will most likely not have real fondue for the rest of my life. Now that doesnt sound so great but don't get me wrong. It was very tasty. But it was also intense which, when you think about it, makes sense. It's cheese and bread. Thats it. Never again. Glad we did it, but never again. The next morning we packed and we soon said our good-byes and were on our way to our next destination: Dijon.