Find your tribe

Recently, at my occasional restaurant job, a family from the U.S. from New Jersey came in, and there was this deep part of me that when I realized where they were from I was like “yes! I recognize you! We are members of the same tribe.”

I don’t necessarily want to feel this way. First of all, nationalism can be a dangerous thing, I mean just look at the state of things, in the United States but also in a lot of Europe and parts of South America, Asia, and Africa as well. But I can’t help it; I’m American. Even though I live in Switzerland, and when I’m traveling I tell people I’m from Switzerland to simplify things and also to avoid being American, I feel American, I can’t help it. If I can improve my language skills (which I believe I can, I just don’t know how long it will take), I’m eligible to become a Swiss citizen, which is obviously a really enticing prospect. But I don’t know if I’ll ever really feel Swiss.

Now seems like a good time to ruminate on nationalism and identity for a couple of reasons: one is Trump’s/the USA’s “family separation” policy, which has now become the “detain an entire Central American family indefinitely but together”. Republicans have been bending over backwards to explain away the horrendousness of the situation, with one (that I know of, but probably many more) Fox News commentator, Brian Kilmeade, saying that it’s not that bad because they’re not “our” kids. 

“These aren’t our kids. Show them compassion, but it’s not like he is doing this to the people of Idaho or, uh, or, uh, Texas. These are people from another country.”

Borders make it so easy to be “us” against “them”. Another very nationalistic, border-dependent activity that’s going on right now is the World Cup. I actually love the World Cup. In general, no one is less into sports than I am, but once every four years I get super into the World Cup, following the groups and standings, rooting heavily for one or two teams until they get eliminated and then finding new teams to root for until the very end. (And what’s worse, I really only follow the men’s World Cup. I’m not this into the women’s, not because I don’t care about women’s sports – I don’t care about any sports – but what I love about the men’s World Cup is that it feels like the entire world is watching together, and unfortunately, it doesn’t feel that way when it comes to the women’s World Cup.)

Despite everything terrible going on, if the U.S. was in the World Cup, I’d probably root for them until they got themselves eliminated. But they saved everyone the trouble this time and didn’t even qualify. So now of course I’m all about Switzerland. 

Last night, Switzerland beat Serbia 2-1 in a pretty exciting game. I hadn’t really considered this going in, but Switzerland has a large population of Kosovan Albanians who were refugees during the Kosovo war of the late 1990s. For some Swiss, this game wasn’t just about their team advancing but a hashing out of deep, old, national hurts.

The two men who scored goals for the Swiss team were both of Kosovan origin, and both upon scoring crossed their hands at the thumbs and waved their hands like wings, the sign of the eagle which is on the Albanian flag (and one of them took off his shirt, earning him a yellow card).

Sam was not impressed. He thought they were unnecessarily bringing politics into the game, and that since they were playing for Switzerland as Swiss people, they shouldn’t be bringing political conflicts between other countries into it (that’s me paraphrasing what I took from what he said so maybe not spot on).

I don’t know how I feel about that particular incident. I don’t really care either way. I think people should be able to express themselves however they want, and apparently there was a lot of booing by Serbian fans at Switzerland’s Kosovan Albanian players before any of this happened. I never really understood the whole “unsportsmanlike” thing; who gets to decide what is okay and what isn’t? 

But the idea of sports being apolitical has obviously been a big topic in the United States because of the NFL taking a stance against players kneeling during the anthem to peacefully protest police violence against communities of color. There are those that argue that sports should be something fun that exists outside of the realm of politics, but of course, that’s fantasy. Sports are incredibly political, and it’s pretty impossible to argue that the World Cup, a tournament literally based on political borders, could be anything but political. 

A nation’s borders aren’t mandated by God or nature, no matter what Mike Huckabee and co. says. Borders are human inventions and are completely political. The existence of a Serbian team is political. Kosovan Albanians on Switzerland’s team is political. The fact that European countries tend to dominate the World Cup is political. The fact that Palestine could never be in the World Cup even if they were all the best soccer players in the world because it is not recognized by the powers that be as a nation is political. (In fact, one of my favorite articles recently is from Roads and Kingdoms about a soccer tournament of unrecognized countries and territories). 

While the nationalism that comes with the World Cup isn't my favorite, I do totally see the value of finding your tribe. Hopefully, they aren't all from the same country as you, but of course, it's pretty likely that they will be if you live in the country where you're from. And even if you don't, people in foreign countries often gravitate toward one another based on language or nationality. Heck, as much as I hate to admit it, I'd kill to meet an American or Brit who lives in our town!

In other news, things are chugging along. I am still working occasionally at the restaurant, trying to become comfortable with always being confused and feeling a step behind. The weather has been absolutely lovely. Today Sam and I went on a short mountain bike ride (I mean, objectively short, subjectively very long). I am a notoriously bad biker. I get winded on the uphills and scared on the downhills, yet mountain biking for some reason is something I really want to do. Because during those relatively flat moments, it’s really quite lovely, and overall, it feels like quite the workout. 

Yesterday we drove down to Poschiavo, one of the small Italian-speaking parts of our Canton (Switzerland has an entire Italian-speaking Canton, Ticino, but within our Canton, Graubünden, there are a few pockets that are Italian-speaking as well). We walked around the lake in La Prese and had a very delicious, if not overpriced, lunch.

A couple weekends ago we went on a hike that started literally three minutes from our house. It was our first big hike of the season and it definitely took a lot out of me. There were parts where we had to walk through snow, and we had to cross a little waterfall which put me into something of a panic, something that’s come up a couple of times since I saw my friend Adele fall in Shenandoah last year. But overall, it was a really beautiful hike, with mountain meadows and little lakes and ponds, speckled with wildflowers. Would recommend.

So here are some pictures from today’s bike ride and our hike from the other week to Lej da la Tscheppa (gotta love that Romansh!). And I hope all your World Cup dreams come true, unless your World Cup dreams are in conflict with mine. Hopp Schwiiz!

One of many nice views down into Silvaplana from our hike to Lej da la Tscheppa

Monty enjoying one of those nice mountain meadows on the way to Lej da la Tscheppa

My absolute favorite picture from that hike

Walking through a little tunnel in the rocks around the lake in La Prese near Poschiavo

Lake pictures are never bad pictures

You can tell I was biking because there's a bike in the picture

You gotta bike to get views like this (or you could just walk up)

And as always, a nice Monty picture. Is he happy or just very thirsty?

Return of the return of the blog

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.

Skills

In honor of the Olympics, this seems like a good time to reflect on some of the things we excel at. As a side note, my brother-in-law Jonas Lenherr will be competing in the Olympics on the Swiss Ski Cross team! The race is February 21, which will be nighttime February 20 in the USA! Husband Sam is in Korea to cheer him on. I'm in bed at home drinking wine. So we all contribute in our own way.

So here are some things I’m good at: understanding subway maps, traveling alone, reading and writing, and speaking enough Spanish to convince Zara I spoke Italian in Milan (to be fair, she speaks neither). I’m also definitely one of the top students in my eight-person German class. Just sayin’.

Here are some things I’m less good at: all athletic activities.

Unfortunately for me, athleticism is a high-value commodity in Switzerland, especially where we live. What the Engadin valley lacks in yoga studios, cafes, restaurants (not counting St. Moritz because we can’t afford that), and friends, it more than makes up for in big snowy mountains and frozen lakes. Which means winter here is all about downhill and cross-country skiing (and probably also ice climbing but that is nowhere near my radar).

I follow lots of aspirational Instagram accounts, where cool, tanned girls backcountry ski and live in vans and rock climb and trail run. But the only way to actually get better at any athletic activity is to just do them. You can’t really study it or gain the ability through osmosis while looking at photos of others. You just have to do the thing.

So trying I am. Definitely trying.

Sam and I put down some big Swiss money and I am now the proud owner of my very own classic cross-country skis and boots. Today I went out on a little expedition, where I fell three times, twice when I was barely moving and just thinking about not falling down in front of people. On the one vague downhill, I tried to do the pizza thing with my skis but ended up crouching down and kind of skiing but with my butt on the snow. Eventually I just took the skis off and walked. I know I will be sore all over tomorrow.

Downhill skiing is going better. The last time I went with Sam and his uncle I didn’t fall at all! Was I the slowest on the mountain? Oh, most definitely. Do I sing to myself when it gets steep to keep calm? Possibly.

The time before that I fell only once, and when I fell I somehow kicked myself in the butt with my own ski. That hurt for a few days.

The time before that time, I went by myself and did really well all day and didn’t fall at all. I even picked up the ski pole of a guy who did fall and kind of threw it at him because I don’t have the ability to ski right up to someone without maybe crashing into them. And then on my way down to the bus I remembered what Sam told me, that when the slope forked to make sure to keep right, otherwise I’d end up further away from home than I wanted to be. So I took the first right I saw. And skied onto a hiking trail. I had to hike back up through powder to the actual ski run. It wasn't ideal.

I can’t judge myself based on the people around me. Everyone here basically skied out of the womb. But it’s still not a great feeling to get passed by everyone on the mountain while never passing anyone yourself. It’s also a bummer to kick yourself in the ass with your own ski.

Still, when I said to Sam that I’m always the worst skier on the piste, he told me that that just means everyone else who is worse than me just stays home. So really, I’m just the worst of the people who chose to ski. But I’m the best skier out of everyone who didn't ski at all!

Speaking of skills, Napoleon Dynamite was on one of the English channels here today and I realized for the first time that the movie is set in Idaho! A place I’ve been! When I saw it back in high school, as a New Yorker I just saw the movie’s location as “weird, nameless, America.” The Idaho/Iowa/Ohio conundrum we face. But that movie has some beautiful scenery! I never imagined when I saw it at the Angelica Theater in Manhattan that I would one day be anywhere near where Napoleon grew up.

Now for some views:

Am I Bad at Traveling?

After over a month away, I’m back home. Or as home as a place can feel after you’ve lived there for two months and then been away for the third.

So with that out of the way, here’s where I’ve been: from mid-December to near Christmas, I was in Chapel Hill, North Carolina visiting my parents in honor of my mom’s upcoming 70th birthday (which actually happened after I left but I couldn’t stay for it if I wanted to be back in Switzerland in time for Christmas). That trip also included a quick hop to Blacksburg, Virginia, where Sam and I lived nearly two years before moving to Switzerland.

Upon my return, we spent Christmas with Sam’s family: his parents, two brothers, sister-in-law, and two kiddos, ages 2 and 6 months.

From there, Sam returned home to Silvaplana while I got on a plane once again and headed to Morocco to meet up with Fadoua, a good friend from Blacksburg who is Moroccan. Morocco has been on my list for a while and obviously the best way to visit any place is to be with someone who is actually from there who can translate and tell you all the best things to eat (which was everything. Everything was the best thing).

We started in Fadoua’s hometown of Azemmour, which is on the Atlantic coast. Living in Switzerland, and in Blacksburg before that (two places that are definitely not ocean-adjacent), I am always excited to be by the ocean. I stayed with Fadoua and her wonderful parents and two great sisters (her third sister lives in Casablanca and I only met her briefly).

During my time there, we went to nearby, picturesque Oualidia where we ate fresh oysters from a street cart and took a windy boat ride. We also went to a fancy hammam in El Jadida and I discovered that having your skin scrubbed off in a steamy room is one of the best things you can do for yourself.

And the food! Fadoua’s mom is an excellent cook and we ate so many good home cooked fish and meat and veggie dishes along with fresh baked bread! The best things! You can see my Instagram for all one million pictures.

Fadoua and me in El Jadida

Amazing pile of fried fish in El Jadida

Delicious breakfast with homemade bread and pastries and yummy tea that I became addicted to (apparently sugar is addictive, who knew?).

Fresh oysters from the oyster guy on the street in Oualidia.

Then Fadoua and I went to Marrakech, which, though way more touristy than the places near where Fadoua grew up, is really special and intense. We stayed in a riad in the medina near the Djemaa el Fna, which is this big square with lots of vendors and guys selling amazing orange juice and at night dozens of stalls selling really good, reasonably priced food. The best things you can get there in my opinion are the snails in their salty snail juice and the vegetable soup which I think is called harira. Also there’s this really good dish of beef leg served with chickpeas. Just eat everything! There are no losers! 

One of the many, many orange juice guys in Marrakech.

One of many, many men making food at the stalls in Djemaa el Fna

Beef tanjia at the riad (clearly it's all about food as usual).

Okay mostly food but also cool tiles.

And then I was on my own. Fadoua went back to her family for her last week in the country and I took a train to Rabat. I’d heard Rabat was kind of boring. It’s the capital, but maybe in the same way Albany in the capital of New York, like it’s where all the politics happen but no one would say that it’s the most exciting place to be. I’ve never been to Albany and I’m not super interested in going, but I was really charmed by Rabat. It was cold and rainy while I was there which gave me an excuse to lounge around the really lovely riad and read “The Girl on the Train” an English book I bought off the street that was actually a photocopy of the actual book. Then I went to the modern art museum which was really great and walked along the ocean. I love me some ocean. 

Hassan Tower in rainy Rabat.

Dat ocean tho.

Seriously, very charming city. I wouldn't lie to you. 

Next and last stop on my Morocco tour was Fez. The riad I found in Fez was also really lovely, but more of a party hostel vibe than the other two, which I kind of picked on purpose because I thought it would be nice to meet some people before I leave.

So to go back to the title of this blogpost after over 500 words, this isn’t where I start to feel like I’m bad at traveling, but it is where I start to realize that I’ve become maybe different at traveling. As many of you know, I’ve backpack traveled a bit in my day, most notably (to myself) the six months I was in Latin America. Back then, I’d choose a cheap bunkbed in any room in a hostel, save money, lock my passport in one of those little lockers, make friends, and not care. And theoretically, I still don’t care. I can generally sleep anywhere as long as I can be mostly horizontal. But practically, I guess I do care. Because I got myself a private room. It’s not like I have all this money to burn, but I’m over 30, I have a little extra cash, and I don’t know, I just feel like something has changed.

This feeling also extended to the riad experience itself. I had a really lovely time and hung out with some Aussies and Americans and a German, plus a couple of guys who worked at the hostel, but I was verifiably the oldest person. Sometimes by a lot.

Beyond my small “what kind of traveler am I now?” crisis, Fez was great. The medina is even smaller and windier than Marrakech which made me kind of claustrophobic and all I can say is thank god for Google Maps, otherwise I’d probably still be in there. Beyond just walking around, which is an experience all on its own, I went to the tanneries to see them make and dye leather. Even though it was smelly, I found it way cooler than I thought I would. I also walked around outside the medina which I enjoyed because Fez is actually near mountains and you can’t see them when you’re inside the narrow city walls. I went up a hill in a cemetery for some great city views. Overall, Fez was a win. Morocco was a win! Go to Morocco! Do it!

A little bit of Fez outside the medina.

Tannery times.

Big picture Fez.

So why, after now 1000 words, am I bad at traveling? Well, it starts at the Fez airport, or more accurately, when I bought my onward tickets. My original plan was to fly from Fez to Rome, because I had never been to Rome before, but then my high school friend Martina who is living in Naples invited me down there so I was like, heck yes! And instead of thinking for five minutes and being like “there are a million direct flights from Fez to Rome and none from Fez to Naples, and Rome is only a few hours from Naples by bus, and only one by train” I was like “Fez to Naples!” and bought two Ryanair flights, one from Fez to Seville, and one from Seville to Naples.

Fun fact about Ryanair: if you left yourself a connection time that’s under four hours, they don’t care that you missed your onward connection (this probably surprises no one because Ryanair is known for being cheap but I didn’t really think about it – hence, bad at traveling). Our flight out of Fez was delayed about nearly two hours, enough time to render my one hour and 20 minutes layover null and useless.

Seville is one of those baby airports that is mostly served by cheapo airlines like Ryanair. Once there, I was given the privilege of paying Ryanair 100 Euro to change my flight to the next evening, because there were no other flights to Italy during the day. Also, the flights to Naples were only every other day. So I booked myself on a flight to Rome. The thing I tried to cleverly avoid in the first place.

Fine. So I’m spending a night and a day in Seville which isn’t the worst thing in the world. I take one of those airport buses to the Ibis Budget hotel but miss my stop and have to turn around and take a bus back in the opposite direction. Are you starting to sense a bad traveling pattern? The Ibis Budget was nice enough. It was next to a regular Ibis which had a little restaurant where I got my first wine (and alcohol in general) in 10 days and a soup. The next morning I paid 1.20 euro for a drip coffee. 

Plaza de España in Sevilla

One of those "my feet on cool tiles" pictures in the Alcazar.

Basically Sevilla is a pretty city. Just keep it in mind.

Since I had the whole day ahead of me until my 10pm flight, I went into Seville and had a really nice time. I had some fried calamari which were pretty mediocre but had some great beer, saw the Alcazar which is really amazing, went to the Plaza de España, and enjoyed being in a place where I could speak the language again. As I stood at the bus stop just after 6pm to go back to the hotel to grab my bags, something made me check my mobile boarding pass. Because all of the sudden I realized, if I’m landing in Rome at 11:30, I can’t be taking off at 10:40pm. Because I had done that most American thing, a thing I had never, ever done before: I mixed up 24 hour time with 12 hour time. I read 20:40 as 10:40 instead of 8:40. Naturally, I flipped out. I imagined myself trapped in Seville forever (obviously there are worse things, but still). I ran and got a cab, asked him to drive to the hotel, wait for me to grab my bag, and then take me to the airport. I always get to the airport two hours ahead of time, so I was getting really nervous. Twenty-five euro later, he dropped me off at the airport just under two hours before flight time. Now I was early. And my wallet was lighter.

The flight to Rome was uneventful and on time, the best kind. I had looked up on Google Maps that there was a bus from the airport to Naples at 1:15am, leaving me about two hours to wait. At first I thought I’d be the only other person waiting, but it turned out there were a ton of people waiting at the airport too. The airport actually closed after our flight, so we were all sitting outside. I figured they were also going to Naples. Right on time the bus showed up. I got up from where I was sitting but no one else did. The bus stayed dark. And then after a minute, as I was walking towards it, it left. I figured it was maybe doing that thing buses in America do sometimes, where it drives around so it can face another direction. I mean, no one else had gotten up, I couldn’t have been the only person there waiting for this bus. After a few minutes, it was clearly gone. I noticed some soldiers standing towards the side of the parking lot so in my best Italo-Spanish hybrid I asked them. They looked at me like I was the dumbest person on earth. The bus had just been there! When would there be another one, I asked. In five hours. So what was everyone else doing sitting in front of the airport? Waiting for it to reopen to take a connecting flight.

At this point, I knew that if I ever did make it home, I could never leave my house again because I am clearly the absolute worst at traveling. You can do a lot of things wrong on the road, but miss a bus that you’re literally staring at? That is a special kind of gift, a sign from God telling you that it’s time to hang up your passport and spend more time with your dog.

The airport was closed, so I put on some more clothes out of my big backpack and took mini-naps on the ground while listening to podcasts. When it reopened at 4am, I went inside and charged my phone. The bus never did come again at 6:15am, but by then, there were shuttles to the train station, so I took one of those, which was something I could have done when my flight landed at 11:30pm the night before but didn’t because I was waiting for the bus. From the train station, there was a quick, but not cheap, train direct to Napoli Centrale. By then I was running on maybe an hour of sleep.

I arrived in Naples just in time to get on the metro during rush hour with my giant backpack. But finally I made it. Martina met me at the metro station, and we went back to hers and I took a shower and a nap.

I loved Naples. The pizza was everything I thought it would be, and we even went out to a reggae club until 3am, which I know people probably do all the time but I obviously don’t because I’m a huge loser. Espresso was one euro and strong and delicious and Naples is just so colorful and vibrant and on the ocean! You know how I love that ocean! My time there, which was supposed to be three days and ended up being just under two, ended when I took an early morning train to Milan to meet Zara, who then came to visit me and Sam in Switzerland for a week!

Delish fried fish with Marti's hand reaching for it.

Damn Napoli, you are one pretty city.

So, for those of you who made it to the bottom of this insanely long blogpost, am I bad at traveling? All signs are starting to point to yes. It really makes me worried about me. Everyone fucks up sometimes on the road. If everything went perfectly, there’d be no adventure, I wouldn’t have seen Seville. Still, those two days between Fez and Naples made me feel like I was losing my grip, like I had a brain tumor impeding all of my decision-making and general motor skills. 

And when I wrote most of this last night, I really felt down about it all. And I'm still not super proud of my ability to miss a bus that's right in front of my face, misread the time, or book a terrible flight plan that cost me a bunch of money in the end. But today, posting all these pictures on this blog and revisiting my last few weeks of traveling, it made me feel like when it comes to traveling, while I'm definitely getting worse, but maybe I'm still just fine.

Fremdsprachen

The other week at around 7am I took Monty out for his morning walk/pee/poop. Not yet fully caffeinated, but luckily wearing a bra, I exited from the door of my tiny apartment building when I noticed a van parked in front. It was from a heating company. A man, probably from said company, exits the building behind me. He starts explaining something to me, not in German or Romansch, the two official local languages, but in Italian.

I stared at him blankly. Italian is tough for me in a strange way, not just because I don’t speak, but because I speak Spanish, which tricks me into thinking I speak Italian. Then I open my mouth to respond, and no words come out because, of course, I don’t speak any Italian at all.

“No parlo Italiano,” I say. It seems like he’s just trying to explain to me that he did something to the heating in the building, which isn’t really something I need to know since I’m not the owner and I don’t pay the heating bill.

“Tedesco?” he asks in reply. Tedesco. The word sounds familiar, and I search my uncaffeinated brain for a definition. I stare at him in silence for a good 10 seconds, which doesn’t sound like a long time, but it is pretty awkward if you count it out. I remember. Tedesco is Italian for German.

“Aleman?” I ask for clarity, which is the word for German in French and Spanish. When he nods, I say “Ein bisschen,” which means a little. Then he starts to explain whatever he was explaining now in German. I still don’t quite get it and I don’t have a response. I just nod and say “Ja, danke” and leave.

Sometimes when I’m out walking Monty and someone hears my shitty German, they start speaking to me in Italian. When that doesn’t work, they’ll switch to English. At the grocery store one of the men chooses to speak to me in Italian. I’ve heard him speak to other people in fluent German.

I feel a little like I’ve been tricked. I came to Switzerland with the understanding that I’d need to learn German, a language that until I met Sam appealed to me less than probably any other language I’d ever heard. But I’d accepted that, and I started to like German, especially Swiss German with all its little “-li”s at the end of words and it’s ridiculous “ch” sounds. So it feels like a bit of a “gotcha” when you’re told that you need to learn German but all you hear around you is Italian.

We live less than an hour from the Italian border, and even closer to a small, Italian-speaking part of Switzerland which is not Ticino. There are more than a few Italians who commute in everyday to where Sam works given the lower cost of living in Italy and the higher wages in Switzerland.

Not that I wouldn’t love to learn Italian by the way. Italian is beautiful and similar to Spanish and there’s so much more gelato in Italy than in Switzerland. But I really only have the brain space for one language at a time.

Which is maybe another problem. It seems like here, not only do people speak multiple languages, but they can switch back and forth between them seamlessly. I speak English obviously, and pretty decent Spanish, and now some German (and theoretically some French that I studied for a billion years at UNIS). My Spanish is way better than my German, yet because I’m here and surrounded by German, I actually have a lot of trouble pulling up my Spanish. It’s like it’s dormant. The other weekend, we had dinner with a couple that we know from Spanish school in Argentina, another love story out of that place.

Angie is from Argentina and her husband Miguel is from Switzerland. They now live near Zurich where she teaches English and Spanish. When we went over for dinner, I assumed it would be a great chance for me to whip out my Spanish, which is of course better than my German. And yet, my Spanish seemed stuck. German, while definitely spoken with many, many errors, actually came more easily. Meanwhile Angie bounced back and forth between perfect Spanish, near-perfect English, and what Sam tells me is near-perfect German seemingly without a thought.

Maybe it’s something I’ll learn in time, to switch easily between languages, living in such a multi-lingual country in such a multi-lingual continent. It’s definitely, to me, an amazing skill I hope to cultivate.

In other news, we went to a Weihnachtsmarkt on Saturday. Those things really are magical. It had mulled wine, roasted chestnuts, grilled meats, melty cheese, and lots of crafts and Knick knacks. It also had some fire pits around, which was extremely helpful given that it was massively cold.

I am something of Grinch, not that I hate Christmas, but that I am one of those “war on Christmas” people Donald Trump talks about who insists and saying “Happy Holidays” and gets a little annoyed when someone automatically says “Merry Christmas” to me, but those markets are pretty special.

Chestnuts roasting!

Also, the Christmas traditions here are definitely different than the ones in America. First of all, here Santa doesn’t come overnight on the 24th, he comes on December 6th. He comes with a helper named “Schmutzli” and they don’t really give out presents, they give out mandarins and chocolate and nuts. And apparently their purpose is kind of to scare kids. When you’re little, Schmutzli comes to your house and makes you recite a Psalm and if you do a good job, you get treats and if you do madly, he hits you with a bunch of sticks. Santa and Schmutzli were at the Christmas market but luckily they just gave treats to all the kids.

Then on the 24th in the evening, kids open presents. I’m still kind of unclear as to if the kids understand that their parents bought them, or if they think the Christmas angel brings them. Also advent calendars are big business here.

The weather here is at the moment very snowy and cold and gray. I'm heading back to Chapel Hill for just under two weeks on Wednesday, but my understanding is it's snowing there too! I guess you just take the weather with you. Anyway, if all goes according to plan, back to the U.S. for a brief time!

Happy Thursday from Switzerland!

So it’s Thanksgiving, aka Jewish Christmas (because we all know Chanukah is a racket). And for the second time in my life, I’m not in the United States. Which means that it’s not Thanksgiving; it’s Thursday.

But fuck it - it is Thanksgiving! So here are some things I’m thankful for: ridiculous snow-covered mountains, glowing in the pale sunlight. My little Monty dog and slightly larger Sam man. Apartments with big kitchens and lake views. Patient German teachers. Bakeries with amazing bread. Getting to visit Morocco over New Year's with Fadoua. Zara being our first American visitor in January. Going to see my parents in a few weeks for my mom's birthday. Friends and family in general. And the WiFi and interconnected world that lets me stay in touch with those near and dear to me while I settle into a new place where I know few people. Also cheese. Duh.

A not uncommon evening view

I’ve been here in Switzerland for almost a month-and-a-half, and Sam’s been in Switzerland since August 18, and living in Silvaplana since mid-September. A little background info: Silvaplana is a small town in the Engadin valley in Southeastern Switzerland. The valley is high, 1800 meters, and the mountains are already covered in snow, the ground lightly dusted. We are here specifically because Sam got a printing job in St. Moritz, the famed pricey ski town.

Switzerland is a country roughly the size of Vermont and New Hampshire put together. However, just because the country is small doesn’t mean everything is a hop, skip, and a jump away from everything else. First of all: mountains. Like these enormous, jagged, pointy rocks jutting up from the earth, making something that might just be 20 kilometers away “as the crow flies” (ugh, that saying) actually an hour by train or car.

So our high valley is actually pretty remote. We’re less than an hour’s drive from one of Switzerland’s borders with Italy, but an over three-hour drive to Zurich, which becomes four hours by train (and since we know how I love to drive…).

I’m currently taking a German class in Davos, which, unlike St. Moritz, is a famous ski city (because apparently 12,000 people makes a city in this country of around eight-and-a-half million) as opposed to ski town and is also around two hours away, each way, by train. The train does have UNESCO World Heritage status though. That's a real thing.

This won’t go on forever because starting next semester I’ll take a German class closer to our house, it’s just that it had already started by the time I moved here, whereas the one I’m in now is an intensive course that’s just a month-and-a-half and intensive. That being said, here's who is in my German class: one Spaniard, three Italians, one Slovakian, one Bosnian, two Portuguese, and one Turk. And me! The only American and native English speaker. Kind of a nice change. 

One of the views from a UNESCO World Heritage train

Ok, enough about me, here’s more about me.

In case you didn’t quite get the idea from above, we are seriously in the middle of nowhere, but it’s a beautiful nowhere. When I’m not in class, I work part-time from a distance (temporarily though) for my old job at Virginia Tech, or try and do my own creative writing thang which unfortunately mostly manifests as rewatching old episodes of 30 Rock. I spend most of my time with Monty of course, the most wonderful, albeit over-energetic, dog in the world.

My constant companion. This was autumn. Everything is snow now.

Like I said, where we live is really close to Italy, and close to an Italian-speaking part of Switzerland (not Ticino, another part, some of which recently got washed out by a landslide). There is also a language spoken in this particular area called Romansch. Romansch is one of Switzerland’s four official languages, and it’s spoken by roughly 20,000 people. Because it isn’t widely spoken, pretty much everyone who speaks Romansch also speaks German. However, all the children in school here are required to learn Romansch along with German so the language doesn’t die out. And Romansch itself actually has a number of distinct dialects. I think the one spoken where we live is called Puter. All I know in Romansch is allegra which means “welcome”, and proxima fermeda (sp?) which means “next stop”.

People here are impressive language-wise. People will just speak to me in Italian and when that doesn’t work, they try German. Fun fact: the word for German in Italian is tedesco. They can switch back and forth seamlessly. I’ve had people ask me, when they hear my subpar German, if I speak Italian, but the joke’s on them, because I’m an American, dammit, and I just speak English. But that’s okay because they often speak some English too.

Here’s a list of the friends I’ve made in Switzerland (not counting all of Sam’s friends and family): a Spanish girl from my German class (who speaks perfect English of course), her fiancé, a older lady with a dog who speaks English but told me she’d speak to me in German so I’d learn, a man who lives in a red house near the bus stop who has a dog named Simba that Monty likes. 

I'd be lying if I said that I don't get lonely or frustrated here. Sure, I get to socialize in German class, but it takes me two hours to get there and another two hours back. If I miss my bus, it pushes my whole schedule back by an hour. And as of right now, there are not a lot of people living in Silvaplana. That should change in the next couple of weeks when the ski season starts and people start to flow in to visit and work but right now, it's pretty dead. As a New Yorker (I know, I never mention it), I seem to keep moving to weirder and weirder places with fewer and fewer people. I like the beauty, but I'm really not a hermit. I like people, and I miss them!

So back to Thanksgiving, which my darling Americans are enjoying as we speak. While I had originally planned to be a Thanksgiving grinch, I decided to try and make some resembling a Thanksgiving dinner after all. I went to the Coop, which is not a co-operative as far as I know, just one of Switzerland's two main supermarkets, and bought a chicken, some brussels sprouts and shroomies, green beans, pecans and pie crust, and some kind of canned cherries to make a sauce resembling cranberry. The Coop actually did have two turkeys, but there were around $120 each. 

The dinner worked out surprisingly well. I'm known in our little household as being a terrible baker, but the pie worked out okay (I know that if you buy the crust pre-made it barely counts as baking but I still had to mix sugar and eggs and stuff and use an oven that's in celsius). The chicken was good; I put lemons and garlic up its butt. The brussels sprouts and shroomies were okay, not as good as like home. And how can you go wrong with mashed potatoes? They were just regular potatoes because Sam doesn't like sweet potatoes and I don't know if they even have sweet potatoes here anyway. Plus we had a bunch of expired potatoes Sam bought half-off and they were already sprouting, so it was time.

Even though Sam got home late because he was working, it was nice to have something resembling a Thanksgiving. In part just because it showed me I could function in my new home; get a bunch of groceries, use my weird oven, substitute agave syrup for corn syrup and weird cherries for cranberries (even that wasn't terrible, although it definitely wasn't good).

The world's cutest saddest little Thanksgiving

Speaking of Sam, his job is going really well. He's a supervisor! HBIC! He runs a big fancy printing press and manages people and is being used to his full potential, which is especially nice after his job at Virginia Tech where he basically got paid to sit around all day and do nothing. And when he's not working, he's dealing with my visa, making phone calls for me because I'm too shy in my shitty German, driving us to the supermarket because I'm too nervous to fit in those tiny parking spaces, and generally doing a good job showing me around the area and taking care of me when I get a case of the lonelies.

So I guess that's the update from here. I miss everyone reading this, unless I get some kind of crazy following and strangers read this in which case, I probably don't miss you, although maybe I would if I knew you.

I hope you all come visit and see our little snowy slice of the world. On the other hand, if you want to meet up in a real place like Paris or London or Amsterdam, I'm all about that as well. Happy Thursday!

He's always up to something...