It has been raining in Bern since morning, boring, fine as dust. The turquoise waters of the Are River, rushing somewhere below, did not inspire at all, and even the houses, leaving facades, in Venetian style, directly into the water, were not pleasing to the eye. Unlike other cities in Switzerland, there are no half-timbered houses in Bern. After a grandiose fire in 1405, when about five hundred houses, built mainly of oak forest!, burned down in a flame along with a considerable number of people, in Bern the townspeople began to build only stone buildings.