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In the 1200s, however, Count Rudolf of Habsburg tried to take control of the forest cantons through his appointed tax agents. This was a bad move. An arrogant jerk called Gessler was one of the agents. One day he came into the town of Altdorf, hung his hat on a pole in the square and insisted that everyone who passed must bow to it.

A local farmer named William Tell came by and told Gessler what he could do with his hat. Gessler ordered Tell to shoot an apple off his son's head.

There is no explanation for Tell's compliance, but the story has him shooting the apple off his child's head and then telling Gessler that if the first arrow had missed, the second would have gone into Gessler's heart. This occasioned an intense argument between the two -- and eventually that's exactly where Tell's arrow ended up, killing Gessler.

Altdorf takes credit for being Tell's hometown. It has a Tell monument and a Tell museum, but in the end historians are not sure that Tell really existed or even if he did, that the events of the legend actually took place. But real or not, the story represents the death of tyranny and the triumph of freedom -- and these are important elements in Swiss tradition.

In 1804 Schiller wrote a play about the Tell tale, and in the 1820s Rossini wrote the William Tell opera. So William Tell and the apple became the central story of the founding of the Swiss Confederacy -- and this became my excuse to visit the capital of the confederacy: the city of Bern.

Bern is a peninsula formed by a bend in the Aare River. It was founded in 1191 by Duke Berchtold V of Zahringen, but you probably knew that already. For many years it was the largest city-state north of the Alps.

Bern is the federal capital of Switzerland, but it has resisted the international atmosphere that you find in most European capitals. Instead it presents the traditions of Switzerland within the context of its own local history. The medieval and baroque buildings are constructed of local gray-green sandstone, which give the streets a feeling of solidity.

You can get around the old town without much regard for the weather since most of the streets are covered with arcades. Over the centuries the population of the city has grown but not the available space, and accordingly every square foot has been put to good use; even the ancient cellars have been turned into shops, theaters and restaurants.

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