I will be moving to Bern soon and would appreciate any comments, opinions, and/or advice. I have been living in Los Angeles for the past 8 years. I am interested in finding out more about the Yoga and fitness community because I Teach and practice Yoga. And about music, theater and entertainment in Bern.
I would love to hear about your experience of living in Bern and the lifestyle.
Any thoughts would be helpful! Thank you! :

I lived in Bern for many many years before moving to Zurich. I think Bern is a beautiful place. However, it might be a bit difficult to make friends there due to the Bernese people being very reserved. I especially notice this after having moved to Zurich where I have gained much more friends within 4 years than in Bern during 15 years. Maybe you will meet people through yoga. If not, I recommend you to maybe enroll in a German class or something like that where you would get a chance of gaining new friends.
Good luck with your move and I hope you will enjoy Bern.

Balerina- thank you so much for your advice!

I live in Bern and I have been here for 2 years now and second what Balerina said...making friends is a bit difficult. It's hard getting past the exterior but once you do, you make friends for life. In terms of yoga, there is a yoga studio that even teaches in English in Bern. http://www.yoga-bern.ch/
I dont know too much about yoga but it seemed pretty nice when I went.

Depending on what kind of music/entertainment scene you like, you'll most likely find what you are looking for. Of course, it can be kind of hit or miss. I mean, Zurich is so much bigger so of course they will have more to offer but I like Bern because it is also a university town so I think the entertainment and music caters to that. Bierhubeli has some great artists who come in and there is generally always something going on in one bar or another on Fridays and Saturdays. Summers are pretty awesome here, too. What kind of music to you like?

I'm in Oregon right now visiting my family until February but when I get back, maybe we could go for a coffee.

Hope that helps!

Bern is a wonderful city, and I miss it very much.

It is a bit hard to break the ice with the "Berners".

It will be a big change from LA.

I have visited Bern many times, and find it quite a nice, charming city.

Perhaps besides your Yoga angle check into their running club there. They have some of the most wonderful paths around the river and some challenging hills, false flats, away from it.

Running is a great equalizer that brings people from differing backgrounds together. Oh yes, playing music with other people, perhaps an even larger equalizer, in my humble opinion.

But for sure it will be a big change from LaLa land, and hopefully you will embrace this and are ready for the new dynamics of the wonderfully human European mind-set.

LA and Bern are about as different as each could get, it will be very interesting. But yeah at the very least take an introductory German course as it will give you a little insight into the Bernese mind, apart from the fact they speak Swiss-German, but youve got no hope of learning that! Ha.

in fact, there are Swiss German classes at inlingua for sure, maybe at other schools too... It is true that you won't understand Swiss German initially if you just take High German lessons. So to integrate better and faster, you might want to consider to take both: Swiss German for speaking and understanding, and high German for writing and reading...

Migros klubschule also have a pretty cheap and decent intro German course