When I try to imagine what Bern might have looked like in 1191, back when Berchtold V of Zähringen and his entourage laid eyes on the bend in the Aare, I see a modest outpost, a scatter of wooden homes, hearth smoke slithering through the roads and the slow industry of daily survival.

When barter was as common as coin.  The blacksmith was paid in cheese, the baker in milk, the seamstress in eggs, the cooper in beer.  Life functioned on trust, reputation, and barter, an economy of need over want.  I like to think of chickens darting across the main drag and the echo of iron clattered hooves.

Back when the body was in danger, but the mind was, perhaps, still free.  When it was fire, famine, plague, or war that came for you, not the slow, silent attrition of a mind stuck listening to the static hum of a hollow world.

Today, the cobblestones remain, but they pulse with a very different rhythm.  Fountains that once served as community gathering places are now framed in the isolation of a smartphone screens.  Buses and trams relentlessly hiss by, blasting their horns at daydreaming tourists and the air thrums with the urgency of modern life trying to squeeze itself into medieval arteries like high-voltage current through old wiring, humming and tense. 

You can feel it in your bones as you walk: a strange electricity, like the past and present are rubbing up against each other and one simple spark would evolve into catastrophe.

I wonder if Bern itself isn't necessarily failing to keep up, rather it’s not quite sure if it wants to.