Bern

November 18, 2008
This morning we woke up at 6:00 a.m. and went to the Temple. We arrived by 7:30 and were able to attend the 8:00 a.m. session. We were the witness couple. There were only 9 people on the session and I believe most of them were Temple workers. The session is given in the language that most of the patrons speak, so today our session was in French. They commonly have people there that speak different languages, so they write your language on your name paper so they know which language to have the session in. It looked like the people come to the temple and go on several sessions. We sat in the foyer and watched all the people that were on our session go on another one. We asked to see the baptismal font and the Temple president gave us the tour. He’s from Italy and has only been the Temple president since the 1st of November. Just before that he was in Salt Lake to get set apart as President. The Temple district is Italy, France, Belgium, Switzerland, Israel and some others I can’t remember. He gave us a book to read that had the recent dedicatory prayer from 1992 in it. In it we found that the Switzerland temple was the first temple to have a video. It was never a live session Temple. This began in 1955. President Hinckley was assigned to watch the videos and the language and get everything just right before the temple was open. He attended the first dedication in 1955 and the second dedication. Pres. Benson couldn’t attend the second dedication so Pres. Hinckley did that dedication. I could have read the book forever, but we only spent a few minutes. The Temple president gave us a new picture of the Switzerland Temple with the Angel Moroni on top. It has only been there for a couple of years. We walked in the grove of trees that President McKay walked and said a Temple would be built here. He gave the first dedicatory prayer.
We had to check out of the motel early, but they let us keep our luggage by the front desk so that was nice. I’m glad I didn’t have to drag a suitcase all over Bern.
Things are very expensive in Bern. The dollar hamburger from McDonald’s was 2.50 francs. That’s a lot more than a dollar, more like two dollars. When we were looking for food to eat everything was so expensive, even the sandwiches. A pizza was 20 francs and we found out that the countries most popular food is pizza. There was a pizza restaurant every place you looked. So whatever food Switzerland is famous for, Pizzaria, Burger King and McDonald’s seemed to be the most popular.
We walked through town to see the Bear Pit, but the bear was inside and it seemed the tourist attraction around that area was all closed. I guess November isn’t the tourist season. From there we just walked along the river and where ever we saw a building of interest. We walked for hours, but it wasn’t like in Vienna where you get lost, it was mostly straight streets. Although we found that in these cities a street with a certain name only lasts until that street has a cross street, then across the street it has a different name. I don’t know how people get around with that type of addressing system.
It rained the whole day from when we got out of the temple to when we caught the train to Paris. The temple isn’t in Bern, we took a train for about 20 minutes to the next city, Zolpen….
As far as being in the Alps goes, it was just like the Rocky Mountains. We never saw the Matterhorn and there wasn’t any snow on any of the surrounding mountains. I don’t know if we weren’t in the right place or my imagination of the Alps was very different than what was here.

I haven’t even got one stamp in my passport this whole trip.