Bern Switzerland

This morning we headed to Bern, a small city on a steep-sided peninsula in a crook of the River Aare in central Switzerland.  Our train brought us here at about one o’clock, but I had misread the check-in info from our hostel, the Hotel Glocke, and didn’t realize you can’t check in until three o’clock because their reception is closed between twelve and three!  The funny thing was the reception girl was there to open the door and tell us we couldn’t check in until three, and she offered to let us put our luggage in the storage area next to the reception desk.  I don’t really understand why they bother to close the reception if the girl is going to be there letting people into the storage area anyways!

We decided to hang onto our backpacks because the storage area didn’t seem too secure, and went and took a nap in the common room area on the couch.  At three o’clock sharp, we went to check in and encountered a line-up of about 15 different groups of people trying to check in because I guess everyone was waiting till it was three! 

Apart from this check-in disaster (which has taught me to double check the rules about check-in and avoid booking at a place that has really restricted check-in times again), the hostel turned out to be really nice. It’s in a really central location and there is a bar downstairs but, amazingly enough, you can’t hear the noise from it when you’re in the rooms.  The common area and kitchen are really nice and clean and are open 24 hours a day, which hasn’t been true of most hostels we’ve stayed at!  We had booked in a 6-bed dorm and were kind of worried about sharing a room with four other people, but we lucked out and got assigned bunk beds on a side of the room that’s divided by a wall from the other four beds so it’s almost like a private room

Three of the other four people in the room showed up shortly after we checked in and two of them were from Canada, but we didn’t get much time to chat with them since the wall kind of divided us and we seemed to come and go at opposite times.   In the late evening, though, the fourth person, Jason from Colorado, showed up and we got pretty well acquainted with him since he wasn’t too shy to come to “our side” of the room to chat!  It looks like we’ll have someone to go sightsee with tomorrow, which will be kind of nice cuz it’s been just the two of us for a while now!