It was about an hours drive up to Fribourg, straight up the motorway, so no sightseeing. We could tell just from walking to the hotel that Fribourg was even more hilly than Lausanne had been and we’d be getting a lot of cardio on our explorations.

We checked in, dropped our bags and headed straight out to the Musée Suisse de la Marionnette, which was in the peninsular surrounded by the Sarine river. It is set in an old house by the river next to a bridge. The museum also has a cafe and a tiny marionette theatre. We had some issues with buying the tickets as we had no CFH in cash and they did not take anything other than a strange local credit card. Luckily my friend had some Euros they were willing to take.

The exhibit is relatively small but wide-ranging, we were expecting only to see Swiss puppets, but they ran the world with Javanese shadow puppets, Indian marionettes and others I didn’t recognise. They also allow you backstage at a small theatre to see how it is all controlled, and there is another that is open for visitor use to perform using some basic dolls. My friend refused to perform for me.

While appealing, it does not take long to see everything, and it was with a small amount of embarrassment that we left, walking past the helpful receptionist, perhaps 20 minutes after we went in.

On the way to the museum we had passed Cathédrale Saint-Nicolas, a building initially from 1283, and later expanded in the 15th Century. It is an impressive building, and as we were then to discover, its bells are very much in working order. At 7 pm, while we were in the bar and updating my journal, the bells rang for a solid 14 minutes.

The route back into town, if we followed the path that had taken us to the puppet museum would have been a very steep climb, so we crossed the bridge and walked through a different part of town. In the end, it made little difference, and we had to get to the top of the hill where the hotel was and short or long, you are climbing the same height.

Before we headed back to the hotel, we tried stopping in a bar for a drink, most were closed for some reason, but we found one, Café du Marché, which was open. The waiter, or owner, was wild-haired and wild-bearded, and when he wasn’t serving, he was doing some studying, taking notes from a thick tomb of French literature. We had a beer and then headed back to the hotel, having decided to try out the hotel bar and give me a chance to update my travel diary as it had been two days and I was lagging.

We went out for dinner to Punkt, a Thai/Malay restaurant with good reviews. The portion sizes were incredible. My starter of fried chicken pieces was in a bowl the size of two fists. I also had a three curry trial for my starter, and we’d moved enough into northern Europe by this point the meal was quite mild, but each of the three curry bowls would have been enough for one person! The restaurant is famous enough it had two signed jerseys from Swiss football players.

We then went back to the hotel to watch a bit of TV, and listen to the bells, which rang every fifteen minutes until after midnight. It was with no surprise I noticed there were earplugs in the standard bathroom kit.

There was no air-conditioning in the hotel room, and the weather was stifling despite the rain throughout the day. The earplugs were too warm to wear, but luckily I can sleep through most noise, even Church-bells driving away demons, though getting to sleep in the heat was a challenge.

We still got up at our regular time and headed down for breakfast, which was pretty much the standard European buffet, some cereals, some cold meats, bread and cheeses and a nod to the British and American guests with some bacon and eggs.

We checked out and left our bags with Reception to go to the Gutenberg Museum. Situated initially in Bern as part of the general cultural museum, the Gutenberg Museum moved to Fribourg. The museum spreads over four floors, with the basement dedicated to the various workshops they do (Screen printing, bookbinding, and any other skill relevant to Gutenberg, it is a fascinating idea). The ground floor houses their temporary exhibits, currently a series of mixed material works, a shoe made out of stone with fabric laces, a giant book with a magnifying glass. It was interesting, but lacking context.

The top three floors cover the development of the moving type printing press, the impact and technological development of the written and printed word and how it facilitated the existence of banknotes (a floor per concept). It is not a very large museum, but a very focused on and the building is excellent. There is a significant focus on type and typesetting, and it is well worth the entrance fee.

We then headed straight to Zurich along the motorway, perhaps the longest single drive we’ve done on this trip so far, but we’d looked into Bern and didn’t see anything that warranted us stopping. (Apologies to the people of Bern).