Category Archives: Switzerland

Pearl Jam, Bern, 13-09-2006

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Tonight’s concert was really good. As we had fan club tickets, Karin and I could get in 15 minutes earlier than those with normal tickets. The set contained many older songs and a few surprises.

Set List: Go, Animal, World Wide Suicide, Severed Hand, Hail Hail, Dissident, Breakerfall, Even Flow, Glorified G, Small Town, Sleight Of Hand, Jeremy, Marker In The Sand, Better Man, Army Reserve, Satan’s Bed, You Are

1st encore: Garden, Low Light, Do The Evolution, Alive
2nd encore: Last Exit, Why Go, Rocking in the Free World (by Neil Young), Yellow Ledbetter/(Little Wing by Jimi Hendrix)

The following photos were taken from the second row on the right side (general admission). On this side the crowd was more unruly than the other so we had to watch ourselves.


Jeff, Matt and Ed


Matt doing a drum solo during ‘Even Flow’


Mike, Stone, Jeff, Ed and Matt


Ed near crowd

Bern, Switzerland

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Bern is Swizerland’s capital. Like Basel, the main language of Bern is German. Karin, an AIESEC trainee in Turkey in 2003-2004, met me at the train station. I travelled with Karin to Iran in 2004.

Karin lives in a wonderful roof-level apartment. She has decorated it with various pictures and souvenirs from her travels.

The view from Karin’s flat

For breakfast we ate bacon rashers and nothing else. For lunch we baked and ate a delicious tomato quiche accompanied by more bacon rashers and a bottle of red wine.

Did I say I missed bacon?

Bern’s historic center is world heritage listed. In the late afternoon we went for a walk around the city.

Bern has bridges, historic churches, fountains, arcades and many other interesting buildings. It is a wonderful place to walk around on a sunny day.

On the way back home we stopped to buy doner kebabs, ordering them in Turkish. I hadn’t eaten an European doner since probably 1999. It tasted delicious, although CHF 8 is far more than the 2 lira paid for a Turkish doner in Mersin.

At the train station we met Julia, an AIESEC Adana trainee from back in the old days of 2001.

Julia, myself and Karin

I really enjoyed meeting up again and I thank Julia for travelling 1 hour to Bern and 1&1/2 back to Zug just to say hi. It is a pity he could not have stayed longer.

After Julia left Karin and I drank a beer at a beer garden. By that stage I was falling over asleep. On the way home we visited an area full of character and interesting people under a bridge…

From Mersin To Bern

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I am now in Bern, Switzerland. To get here from Mersin I used the following sequence of vehicles: bus, plane, plane, bus, train, bus. The journey began 5 pm on Monday and finished around 9 am Tuesday. Here are a few travel tidbits:

– 2 Swedes and a Turk wre chatting very loudly on the on the free Pegasus service bus between Mersin and Adana. Their topics of conversation included Swedish fish and ice hotels.

– At Adana Airport in under 10 minutes I passed entrance security, checked-in, went to the toilet and got through departure lounge security. I wish preparing to fly was always this easy.

– The aeroplane used by Pegasus Airlines was an www.izai.com.tr plane and did not display the Pegasus name anywhere.

– Sabiha Gokcen on the Asian side is the ‘cheap’ airport where many low-cost and charter airlines fly to. What aren’t cheap are the airport cafes. A can of cola and ‘tost’ (a grilled cheese sandwhich) each cost 7 lira. For Turkey this is extortion. Thankfuly, my dried apricots, apricot kernels and water were enough for my 7 hour stop-over.

– At 3:30 am I boarded my first EasyJet flight, complete with first-in first-served seating.

The Easyjet Aeroplane at Sabiha Gokcen Airport with the lights of Istanbul in the background

– When exiting Basel Europort the immigration lady did not stamp my passport, to my disappointment. Dammit, I want stamps!

– The combned bus to Basel Train Station/Inter-City train to Bern cost CHF 39.80 (EUR 25). Ouch! As I had already visited Basel in 1999 I did not look around and went straight to Bern. The dual-level train to Bern was amazingly smooth.

The train I took from Basel to Bern with the Swiss Rail Authorty’s acronym in German, French and Italian, 3 of the 4 official languages of Switzerland. The other official language, Romanisch, is only spoken by a tiny proportion of the population.