Thursday, 24 May 2012

Biel

One day we decided to head for the northern part of Switzerland, an area hitherto unexplored by us. We chose Biel (Bienne in French), on the edge of the Jura 'mountains' and Bern (Berne in French), the capital, as our destinations. Note the dual German and French spellings of these places which lie on the linguistic border with Switzerland. This post concerns Biel. And once again we used the Swiss rail system as our means of transport: fast, always on time, and serving just about every town in the country. Have you ever considered how one of the most mountainous countries on earth manages such a dense rail network?

We found Biel an attractive city lying on Bielersee. The lake front was beautiful. Downtown near the railway station, the architecture was fairly modern but uninspiring, but further back the historic old town was a maze of alleyways and lovely old buildings attractively nestling together. These pictures show what I mean.








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