The Swiss parliament building in Bern, just before the laser light show begins.

Emerging with renewed energy from the blast at Bern’s train station, we hit Bern’s streets heading past the parliament buildings where we heard loud noises and saw a huge crowd gathering.

At this point, we had no clue that the blast at the train station was merely a harmless mechanical/electrical malfunction, so the gathering masses were of some interest to us. The last time we had stepped onto the cobblestone square in front of the parliament building, it was surrounded by police and full of Tamils lobbying against any deportation of their numbers back to Sri Lanka where they might have an unpleasant experience, such as facing execution.  I have no comment on their political situation, but along with the requisite smouldering angry young men, the crowd was full of children and elderly people, so that seemed safe enough to me and I dove in see what was the matter.

My sons later observed that this was unwise.

“When you see police surrounding black people, do not go in there. It never ends well,” said one. That is true in some instances, but in this one there was no violence, and because the Tamils have jobs and families to attend to, they did not camp out in the square, as has now become the fashion with protest movements.

But that was then.

We joined the crowd and were treated to a delightful laser light show that played over the parliament building. It was awesome. Click here to see a short version of the show (click to the one-minute mark for the coolest part), and here for a longer 15-minute version.