Creative Butter Ad

Floralp butter has all kinds of creative ads. I have posted the ones with the Grittibänz (dough boys) stealing the butter and carrying it away. This is the first time I've seen bread loaves or rolls posing as bandits. I especially like the "smiles" on their "faces" as they make off with the goods.

A Play on Words

When we saw this ad, we just had to chuckle. All Americans know the expression, "Houston, we have a problem." The verb for coughing in German is "husten", and it is pronounced a lot like the name of the city in English. This ad says, "Husten, we have a problem" and is an ad for cough syrup! In case you didn't get the joke, the guy that is coughing is dressed in a space suit (with the scarf added, because he has a cold), and has outer space behind him. We were kind of surprised that this American expression would be so well known in Switzerland that it would be used in an ad.

Lucerne's Hofkirche

As part of our "Mini" Senior Missionary Conference, we walked around Lucerne. I had seen this church in the distance earlier, but we got a chance to go inside and look around. It is the main church in Lucerne, which is a Catholic canton. We could get an idea of the statues and decoration that were probably in Bern's Münster before the Reformation. The two towers on the church really give it a distinctive appearance, and the iPhone's camera gives it a unique perspective.

Münster Bells

This chart shows all the bells at the Bern Münster (Cathedral), as well as the dates they were made, how heavy they are, and what note they sound. The hand-written notes at the top tell you at which level of the tower the bell is hung. If you add up their weights, it is a LOT. The big bell alone weighs over 10 tons, and the oldest bell, cast in 1403, weighs over 6 tons. (The Feuerglocke or Fire alarm bells, aren't used for playing.) There are different "bell ring sequences" for different times, for different worship services, and for different holidays. This is one way the townspeople could always keep track of what time it was, what day it was, and what was going on.

And this is the "Score"

It is certainly very pretty, but I really don't know how to read it. Each color represents one of the bells. That's pretty easy to figure out, because the colors are labeled at the left edge. The piece started out with just the "Grosse Glocke" or big bell, ringing alone, then one bell joined it, and then another. About 2/3 of the way through the piece, it was hard to tell which bells were ringing when, as the overtones were so strong. I cut off the last 3 minutes so the rest of the score would be larger and easier to read. Let me know if you can figure it out--or if you need to see the last three minutes!

Christmas Lights

One of the things that makes winter seem not quite so dreary are all the Christmas lights. This picture was taken at dusk, looking down Spitalgasse, past the Loeb department store. If you look carefully, you can see the outline of the Kafigturm (one of the old city gate towers) and its pointed roof at the end of the street.

Loeb

This is a large department store right near the Bern main train station. They have not one, not two, but three trees outside each window. And the picture can't show it, but the lights all twinkle. The church shrouded in the background is the Heiliggeist Kirche, where they are working on renewing the sandstone facade of the church. This picture was taken at 8:15AM, so you can see that the sun is not quite up yet!