Summer 07 -- what summer? -- in Bern

Hello again

It's cold out there! Over lunch at work we were talking of the hot days of April past when I even ventured into the river for a quick, refreshing swim. This morning -- and a late morning it was, too, more about that perhaps later -- I cycled to work wearing socks and warm shoes, long-sleeved t-shirt, scarf, woolly cardigan, coat. For the past hour or so I've been contemplating putting the scarf back on because I've felt chilly about my neck and throat. Mad, this!
A year ago we were sweltering in +30°C or thereabouts, and I was introducing a Scottish friend to the magic of our gorgeous river. We also ventured up to the Jungfraujoch (tomorrow a year ago exactly), where we chanced into friends of his from Inverness -- what a gas it was to be cavorting about in the cool snow under a perfect blue sky. Unbelievable, but true, as this photo proves:
Well, right now the view from Jungfraujoch must be of swirling cloud and white mist and in the river there's no swimming at all. These days, anyone who tries must be suicidal: the rivers in this area are all full to almost flood level, and so are the lakes. The river's waters are murky, carrying a lot of broken-off branches of trees and other debris, and hiding dislodged rocks. Only about a week ago, the police found the body of a young lad, about seventeen, who had suddenly vanished in the swiftly running river some ten days earlier, on one of the rare summery days this past June. Someone saw a body being carried down the "Schwellenmaetteli"-barrier in the "Matte". Search teams couldn't find the body until it washed up quite a bit further downstream, in one of the "combs" holding back debris and flotsam from the inlet to a small hydropower station.
Luckily, the forecast for the weekend is rather better, so, after all, I might not need to buy a rain cover for myself and my backpack for a day's walking in the Jura. In fact, they're calling for very hot weather.
This yo-yo system -- changes of over 10°C in less than a day, with the snow-line down to about 2000 m asl today, which at least might mean the glaciers aren't melting off quite so fast -- is taxing everyone: after a week of very chilly weather, we had a middling Friday and a very hot Saturday, followed by a day of rain and much cooler temperatures and doctors have noticed a lot of flu patients flocking to their surgeries.
Here, just to underpin memories of sunnier days, here are a few photos of last Saturday, when Berne saw the kick-off event to a petition drive to encourage our government to up funding of development projects in the third world to 0.7 per cent of GDP. I was helping out at the stand of one of my favourite NGOs, pbi-Peace Brigades International, far from the only one to do so:
Public attendance and interest was pretty good, and it wasn't only young people who were curious to see what was inside the boxes hanging from threads:
A helper at alliance sud's neighbouring stall: