{"id":360,"date":"2012-11-05T20:53:33","date_gmt":"2012-11-05T19:53:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/joncu.roguenet.org\/swissblog\/?p=360"},"modified":"2021-09-21T22:48:36","modified_gmt":"2021-09-21T22:48:36","slug":"fribourg","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jmcw.blog\/swissblog\/2012\/11\/05\/fribourg\/","title":{"rendered":"Fribourg"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jon had another all-day rehearsal on Saturday, so I spent the time window shopping.\u00a0\u00a0It quickly became obvious that, once familiar with stores and watching for sales, one could<\/em> find affordable clothes if one lived here permanently.\u00a0 Though tempted by a few sightings, remembering our difficulty packing held me back from buying.\u00a0 By the way, so far men\u2019s clothing in Bern is looking very traditional and bland while women\u2019s clothes have more style than I ever see in America.<\/p>\n

Determined not to waste a day off in Switzerland, for Sunday I planned a day trip to Fribourg.\u00a0 Jon was pretty tired, but with a little encouragement, agreed to go.\u00a0 Fribourg was not quite as attractive a town as their tourism site describes (which\u00a0is usually the case), but we enjoyed wandering its old streets.<\/p>\n

\"Fribourg<\/a>

St. Nicholas Cathedral in Fribourg<\/p><\/div>\n

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The cathedral has a very unimposing front, more so since the plaster is crumbling. Inside, however, the stained glass windows were exceptional, designed and made mostly by Polish artist J\u00f3zef Mehoffer (1869-1946)\u00a0 in the late 1890\u2019s to early 1900\u2019s.<\/p>\n

\"Mehoffer<\/a>

The bold colors and clear images of Mehoffer's stained glass.<\/p><\/div>\n

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We visited three churches in 1.5 blocks:\u00a0 St. Nicholas Cathedral,\u00a0Eglise des Cordeliers and\u00a0 Basilique de Notre Dame.<\/p>\n

\"Eglise<\/a>

Eglise des Cordeliers<\/p><\/div>\n

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As we exited the third, it started to rain so we ducked into Espace Jean Tinguely et Niki de Saint Phalle.\u00a0\u00a0The museum is tiny and\u00a0Tinguely’s\u00a0works, while vaguely interesting, held no sense of \u2018art\u2019 for us.\u00a0 We have seen other \u2018recycled-junk\u2019 art which seemed truly artistic, but we found his work boring.<\/p>\n

\"Tinquely<\/a>

Tinquely "Art"<\/p><\/div>\n

Just up the street from the Tinguely (and offered at a discount if you buy admission to the two museums together) is the Art & History Museum.\u00a0 Initially it seemed somewhat small and with a rather typical assortment of mostly religious pieces.\u00a0 As we explored, we were taken deeper and deeper into\u00a0rooms some of which were apparently part of the foundation of some large fortress or castle from\u00a0the look of the walls.<\/p>\n

\"Fribourg<\/a>

Old statues in an ancient room in the Fribourg Art & History Museum.<\/p><\/div>\n

\"Reliquary\"<\/a>

Reliquary in Fribourg Art & History Museum<\/p><\/div>\n

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We had planned to cap our day with seeing \u201cSkyfall\u201d in Bern.\u00a0 It started at 8:15 so between the rain and early sunset, we had plenty of time for a leisurely dinner in Fribourg.\u00a0\u00a0 Prepared now to pay exorbitant prices for average food, I was nonetheless stunned with the poor quality at the restaurant we happened to choose:\u00a0 food so tasteless and difficult to swallow that I ate almost none of it.\u00a0 This by someone who usually \u2018licks the plate clean\u2019 to avoid food waste.<\/p>\n

With the food so bad, we didn\u2019t linger and were back in Bern early enough to try dessert at a place we know.\u00a0 They however were having\u00a0a food fest that was closed to the public.\u00a0 So we ‘settled’ for chocolates from a train station store and headed on.<\/p>\n

\"Vending<\/a>

Swiss Vending Machine: The pregnancy test is next to the condoms, in case you have doubts about using them.<\/p><\/div>\n

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In November and December Bern puts on a free outdoor light and music show called “Rendez-vous Bundesplatz”, using the Federal Building, where Parliament meets, as the backdrop.\u00a0 This night we saw it for the second time and enjoyed it just as much as the first time.<\/p>\n

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\"Rendez-vous<\/a>

The light & music show is designed specifically for the Federal Building<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

We thought we were still early for the movie, but in Switzerland movie theaters have you pick your seats when you buy your tickets.\u00a0 With some people buying tickets online, we ended up in the third row from the front.\u00a0 Still, popcorn satisfied my hunger and though the film was long, it was fun to be in a dry theater, in comfortable seats, watching a new movie in English.<\/p>\n

Side note:\u00a0 I had an exceptionally miserable cold–undoubtedly contracted at one of the parties last week–and with the stress of extra rehearsals and performances and a very long day on Sunday, Jon spent much of this week in bed with a cold.\u00a0 We are thinking with rain forecast this coming Saturday and Sunday, this may be a complete resting weekend.\u00a0 Whoever says you can\u2019t have too much fun hasn\u2019t had a 55th<\/sup> birthday.<\/p>\n

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Jon had another all-day rehearsal on Saturday, so I spent the time window shopping.\u00a0\u00a0It quickly became obvious that, once familiar with stores and watching for sales, one could find affordable clothes if one lived here permanently.\u00a0 Though tempted by a … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-360","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-switzerland"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jmcw.blog\/swissblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/360","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jmcw.blog\/swissblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jmcw.blog\/swissblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jmcw.blog\/swissblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jmcw.blog\/swissblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=360"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.jmcw.blog\/swissblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/360\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1503,"href":"https:\/\/www.jmcw.blog\/swissblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/360\/revisions\/1503"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jmcw.blog\/swissblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=360"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jmcw.blog\/swissblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=360"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jmcw.blog\/swissblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=360"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}