Clearly regular blogging is not a strength of mine. But here we are, back again. It’s spring! Or whatever the spring equivalent is in Silvaplana, Switzerland. The lakes are lakes again, as opposed to frozen blocks of ice covered in snow. The snow on the mountains has mostly melted and ski season has been over for more than a month now. I’ve started running again, at my usual breakneck speeds, and it’s just very nice to not be cold anymore. It’s still a lot cooler here than in the rest of Switzerland (temperature-wise I mean). Gams, where Sam’s family lives, has shorts and t-shirt temperatures while we’re still deep into sweater weather.
Spring in Silvaplana
Summer in Gams
I have no doubt though that summer, whenever it does finally arrive, will be quite lovely. In terms of outdoor activities there’s definitely no shortage of things to do here.
I’m not generally super into the celebrity culture, not since I left trendy NYC anyway, and celebrity deaths generally don’t affect me that much, but the suicides of Kate Spade and Anthony Bourdain has perhaps made me a little reflective, especially that of Anthony Bourdain. Although Anthony Bourdain’s entire career was pretty much centered around two of my big interests, travel and food, I actually didn’t really watch his shows or read much of what he wrote. But from what I have read and seen, and from interviews of his I’ve heard, I know that his big passion wasn’t just traveling to new places and eating street food to show how authentic and low maintenance he was, but really meeting people, not simply eating food but sharing a meal, learning about the people who had invited him into their homes, their restaurant, to sit on the stool next to their cart.
I’m reminded by this both how much I miss these kind of adventures (which I know is a special kind of ridiculous thing to say living abroad in Switzerland) and also how fortunate I have been to have had moments like these, times when I’ve experienced hospitality around the world that involved breaking bread.
In a strange digression, these things sometimes occur to me when I think about all the Facebook/fake news drama. In theory, I’d love to get rid of Facebook, but it really helps me connect to people I’ve met in my travels. Just recently, when Sam and I were in Paris to meet up with our honeymooning friends, we were able to see a friend of ours who lives near Paris who we met on safari in Kenya. That definitely would not have happened without Facebook.
Kenya reunion in Paris
Beyond travel and food, both suicides have helped disabuse me of the notion that success equals happiness. Even though I kind of already knew that wasn’t true, I think that because I’m in a weird transitory stage of my life, not really working, kind of studying, doing this that and the other thing, nearing a birthday, I definitely feel like I’m not quite where I should be, and when I get down, that feeling of being left behind is what comes up. And while I definitely don’t think there is anything wrong with ambition or having goals, it is also important to remember that these things aren’t the be-all end-all. So I’m trying to remember that, not measure myself too much against you know, societal junk, and enjoy the things around me, as in beautiful mountains and lakes.
Some of the aforementioned mountains and lakes (and their reflections!)
Anyway, here are a few things I/we have done over the past few months:
I’m back in German class! It started also mid-February and this time it’s much closer to home. The class I took in the fall was in Davos which is almost 2 hours away, each way, by train. This class is in Samedan, which is just 20 minutes by car or 40 by bus. Like everything else in this specific part of Switzerland, the class is filled with Italians. Out of 8 students, 4 are Italian, and even the teacher is Italian, but from the German-speaking part of Italy (did you even know there was a German-speaking part of Italy? Look how much you’re learning!). The other students are Greek, Moroccan, and Mozambican. And me, representing the good old USA. Even though German is a language I never wanted to learn, I am enjoying it. As with anything, the better you get at it, the more you like it.
On the employment/cash money front, I still come up woefully short but I am no longer completely unemployed. I got a very occasional job helping out at a restaurant in town. Because my German skills are still…let’s say in a state of constant improvement, I don’t really wait tables. Plus, since I’m only there when they need extra help, I don’t get a ton of experience, so instead, I end up doing all the things I’m worst at in food service, which is carrying things. I’m terrible at carrying things. I don’t drop them, I just carry no more than 2 plates at a time and it takes all my concentration. The only thing that ever made me a good waitress was being friendly and not getting visibly annoyed at customers, and those skills are being wasted!
In a minor twist, I somehow found some freelance translation work, translating some St. Moritz tourism materials from German into English. It was definitely a little above my current level of skill but with lots of re-reading, help from Google Translate, and even more help from Sam, I was able to translate a few short articles. A lot of what I’ve read that is translated from German to English here is technically correct but reads weird, so hopefully whatever I wrote sounds more normal, since English translations aren’t just for English speakers but really for pretty much anyone who doesn’t speak German but does speak at least a little English. Other than that, I’ve done a very small amount of freelance writing and a very large amount of Netflix watching.
Other fun things we’ve done: I went to Milan to see Black Panther in English, we went to Spain for my mom’s 70th birthday which was great, saw our besties from Blacksburg on their honeymoon in France, Sam made beer up at the Alp his dad runs in the summer (and it’ll be ready hopefully in a few weeks!), Sam’s brother and family have taken over the farm and are doing a big gut-renovation on their childhood home, plus the summer should involve some more quasi-domestic travel as well to French-speaking Switzerland and French-speaking France with my parents!
Sam and me and mom in Ronda, Spain
Joining Eduardo and Isabella's honeymoon in France
I’m not sure if I’ve ever written so much without mentioning Monty! He’s loving the summer and now he can drink out of the lake, but I know he also misses the snow because for some reason he loves pooping on snow. And he’s afraid of the electric cow fences that get put up in the summer because he’s gotten zapped a few times. But mostly he’s just living his best summer dog life! And hopefully, so will I!
It is even a blog without a picture of Monty? No, no it is not.