A day away

Only a 45-60 minute train ride away is Bern, the capital of Switzerland. When feeling like you need a little bit of a change, or just a day away from Neuch (it's a fab town, but it's always nice to do something a little different every so often) Bern is the perfect place to go.
Berne (the French spelling, "Bern" is the English/German spelling) was actually the first city I revisited from my original travels here in '97. It was pretty exciting remembering certain things from my time here all those years ago.
Bern has a pretty big market compared to Neuch. One half is food stuffs and the other side is crafts and gift ideas. And then there's a whole lot of stores too. It's nice to see a little bit of variety every so often. One big attraction of Bern for many people I know is, disappointingly, the Starbucks (I'm a Second Cup girl, as you all know). The town itself is beautiful as well. I love just walking around and breathing in the air and seeing the sights and sounds of the city.
I love discovering cities by walking around, so I spent a lot of time wandering around myself yesterday. I didn't mind the alone time, I actually enjoyed it, because all week long I'm around people, and sometimes you just need some time to unwind and be completely at peace with yourself. I took the train in with people (only because I happened to bump into them at the train station), then planned to meet them later that day after we'd gone off to do our separate things, and met another group for lunch (and then split up again afterwards).
The one thing I don't like about Bern is that stores close at 4pm on Saturdays. TOO early! Alas, you deal with what you get.
Which means, after everything closes at 4pm, and you're too tired from walking around all day to do anything else, you sit and have a coffee/dessert before going to watch a movie (more selection in Bern compared to Neuch).

Yesterday, we decided to watch The Interpreter. How long ago did this one come out in Canada? We saw the original English version (with German and French subtitles), and because I don't make too much of attempt to stay in the loop with the world of entertainment, I had no idea what the movie was about. I tried to ask about it, but no one else seemed to know that much. Slightly annoying, because I usually like going into movies knowing exactly what's going on (not that I want to know how the movie's going to end, but just what the plot line is and stuff). Oh well, it's something that I'll just have to get used to I guess.
I actually enjoyed the movie (except for the last 10 minutes or so). It was pretty exciting. I've never really seen anything with Nicole Kidman in it (yes, not even Moulin Rouge - shame on me), but I've seen Sean Penn before in some stuff and I really enjoy his acting/movies, so this was (I guess) another reason I was willing to watch a movie that I knew nothing about. I'm sure everyone does this to some extent, but I love guessing what's going to happen in movies. I don't watch that many movies, but the last one that was worth predicting that I saw was Ocean's Twelve, and I pretty much predicted the whole thing. How boring. This one gave me a little bit of a harder time. I could decide which way the story was going to go, and for some things I'd guessed right, but for a couple other things, I just wasn't sure how the director/writer/whoever was going to keep going. I just couldn't read the director/writer/whoever well enough. Anyway, bottom line is that for picky movie watcher me, weighing out the pros and cons of the movie, overall, I would say that I enjoyed the experience!