Despite the inclusion of multiple pictures, giving the impression that there were many bears, I only saw three. Only two of which, I have photographed. There are two separate bear pits or bärengraben, divided by the little castle type affair. In one pit was a solitary bear, it looked like a lone male to me. The way that he was pacing around and chewing things reminded me of my teenage years.

In the other pit, the larger of the two, was a larger I guess male (right) and a slightly lighter coloured and smaller female. I have named them Mr and Mrs Bear.

They looked well cared for and certainly not going insane from being in the enclosure as I have seen at some zoo's sadly. Berne which was apparently founded in the 12th century is meant to have been named after the first animal killed there a bear, hence their canton's flag being a bear. I've spent some time on the Internet looking at different articles for the history of the pits, it seems they have been some 500 years, and looks like they will be getting a new home soon, here is a BBC news article, November 2004.

After the bear pits I walked up the steep hill to the rosengarten to get a city wide shot.

It was actually a pretty poor day for taking photo's, it rained a couple of times, and I had to put my camera away, and try different things with my polarising filter, to try and bring out a bit more colour under the dull sky.

I tried also to go and visit Albert Einstein's apartment, where he lived whilst working at the bern patent office, where he envisioned general relativity and published it some years later. This was also closed. See photo bottom left, it's above the silver car, on the second floor.

I also tried to take a few shots of the beautiful gothic, 15th century cathedral, but it was covered in scaffold, and despite a few attempts at stained glass window pictures, these proved fairly boring in result.

I spent a few hours more wondering around the city trying to get good shots, it didn't work out so well, but I had fun trying and it was a lovely city, despite any reports of recent drug problems there, I saw no trouble or nastiness.