Paris, Besançon, Berne; June–July, 2008

Paris

We fly into Charles de Gaulle airport on Sunday, 29 June. The bus to the Gare de Lyon will supposedly take half an hour. Instead it takes half an hour just to visit all of the other airport terminals. Then it creeps through traffic on the road to Paris. Probably everybody is going on holiday. We have just a few minutes to see Patrick and meet his children Agathe and Gabriel before catching the train to Besançon. Actually it's two trains: we transfer at Dijon.

Besançon

See also Besançon among my city pages. We are visiting Şule, who is here to learn French. So, while Ayşe and Şule speak Turkish to each other, and Ayşe and I, English, Şule and I can now speak the local language to each other.

In town

The Citadel

Back down

Berne

On Wednesday morning we catch the train back to Dijon in order to take the TGV to Berne. When we enter Switzerland, it looks as if there will be no passport control; but eventually somebody does give our documents a cursory look.

Our hotel is Goldener Schlüssel, in the Old City.

Niesen

The organizers of this year's Logic Colloquium offer a choice of three excursions on Saturday: one to the Paul Klee Museum, another to a cheese factory, and the trip we take, to the mountain called Niesen. One ascends and descends by funicular railway, or rather two: the trip takes half an hour. Though there is a hiking trail, it is said to take several hours and to be hard on the knees. From the top, however, some of us do hike down to a subsidiary summit before climbing back up for a glass of wine. Those among us who speak German are amused by the flowery description of the wine in the menu.

Alexandra (organizer of next year's Logic Colloquium, in Sofia) also takes photos, including these of Ayşe and me.

Around town

Klee Museum

On Tuesday afternoon Ayşe and I catch a bus to the Klee Museum with my student Özcan (currently spending a year not far from Berne, in Freiburg, Germany).

Özcan takes the following.

The museum provides a large plan to the sculpture garden and to a walking route back to the city with sculptures and other installations here and there. The skull supposedly has a sauna inside, and when this is in operation, steam should come out of the eye sockets.