October 11, 2015
This has been a day of walking, walking and walking some more. It’s a
good thing that we like to walk. We took the train to Langnau. This is a small
town in the farming area of Switzerland and the town where some of my ancestors
were born. Many of them left during the persecution of the Anabaptists in the
mid-1800s and moved to the Alsace area of France, on the Switzerland border and
then on to the USA. Since it was Sunday, not much was open here, just a few
restaurants and we had brought our lunch so we didn’t need to stop at those. We
walked around the town, checked out the Reformed Evangelical Church, asked
about the Mennonite church but never did find it . . . so no luck with finding
the graves of my dead ancestors. It is a cute town with neat little shops that
had some intriguing things displayed in their windows. It’s probably good that
they were closed. We ended with the
obligatory pose by the town name displayed at the train station so everyone
knows that we have been there. We are not sorry that we went even though we
never did see the cemetery or the Mennonite church.
After returning to Bern on the train, we started our exploration. Our
first stop was an old Reformed church where a young woman was practicing the
organ. I was in heaven. She was practicing her footwork for part of the time
and it was pretty awesome. I could have stopped and listened to her much longer
but we needed to get on our feet. Old Town Bern is close by so we started
walking. It is quaint, has cobblestone streets and a medieval vibe to it. They
have kept it up very nicely. 
Most of the shops were closed but there were many
places that you could still check out, like churches, parks, the river Aare, fountains,
clocks, statues, the bears in their own little park and, of course, the
chocolate. The famous clock tower is replicated in Berne, IN. On our walk, we
discovered the Restaurant Ringgenberg (how they spell it here) so we tried out
their hot chocolate since everything else was more than we wanted to spend. It
was a quaint little place.
As we were walking along the river, we noticed a group of Africans having
a baptismal service in the river. It was interesting and exciting to watch
people of all nations celebrating their faith in Jesus. Some of the local
people here looked a little questioning as they watched. God is pretty far from
anyone’s mind in this country.
We are getting to know the train station experience fairly well. The Bern
station has practically everything that you would ever want, including grocery stores
and various shops and eating places. We have mostly been eating local snack
food and haven’t been disappointed yet.
It’s getting late and we are off to Basel in the morning. See you next
time.
No comments:
Post a Comment