7 Great Years

Where it all began...

Our home in Zurich

It’s been about 7 months since we moved back home after our time in Europe. I of course had intended to write this last post much sooner but life has been busy with finding a home, finding daycare for the girls, getting ramped up on a new job, unpacking boxes, holidays, and just plain life.

In some ways it’s hard to believe that our European adventure is over. It’s been all we’ve known for the past 7 years. And what an adventure it’s been. We never expected that what was supposed to be a one year assignment in Zurich would have turned into 7 years, living in 3 different countries and having two babies. It has truly been a dream come true for me and I am so grateful for having it.

Many people ask us which of the cities we lived in was our favorite. This is always a tough question to answer as the circumstances in each one were different. Zurich was amazing. It’s clean and safe and beautiful and everything ran on time and just worked well. But it was also small and super expensive. We were here for 1 year and took advantage of it being quite centrally located in Europe to travel to many different cities and countries.

Then there was Paris, where we lived for 4 years. We loved it here. It’s obviously an iconic city with beautiful architecture anywhere you walk. We loved exploring the city but we also really enjoyed exploring France. I think we covered most regions, especially the wine regions. If I really have to choose one city where we lived as my favorite, I do usually say Paris. Amazing and cheap wine, cheese, baguette, croissant….those are just a few reasons Paris is on the top of the list. Plus I just never ever got tired of seeing the Eiffel Tower.

Our home in Paris

And then lastly there was London, where we lived for 2 years. I don’t know if I can fairly compare London to the others. When we moved there, Josephine was 2.5 years old, I was 7 months pregnant and Nate and I were both working full time (and in hindsight we stupidly didn’t take any time off for the move). As soon as we got there we had to furnish our home (after living in furnished apartments in both Zurich and Paris), find daycare for Josephine, find a doctor for me and get registered at a hospital for my delivery. Looking back, that was definitely a stressful time. And as soon as we started to feel like we were settling, Elaine came! So London didn’t get a fair chance from us in the beginning. But as we got more settled into figuring out life with two little ones and could get out to explore London more, I was really starting to like it. I absolutely loved our neighborhood of Parsons Green. It had a few parks, a cute main street and had a small neighborhood feel that I loved. And it wasn’t far if you wanted to go into Central London. There is a ton to do in London and so once we finally got to start doing those things, it was really growing on me. English was another big bonus moving here. While I loved the opportunity to learn a little bit of French and practice it regularly, it’s just so much easier and less exhausting to live in a country where you speak the native language fluently.

Our home in London

Overall though, I have such fond memories of all three cities and each one of them will always feel like home and will hold a special place in my heart. I already look forward to going back to visit and going by our old neighborhoods and favorite places!

It’s hard to sum up the entire experience except to say that I am just so grateful. I learned a ton from working there and worked with a most amazing team. And through work I got to travel to some very cool places like Budapest, Lisbon, Sydney and on and on. The Europeans have taught me to cherish your holiday and to truly take a break from work. I hope I don’t lose that notion of a 2 week vacation every summer (although I already see this as potentially challenging just due to a different mindset in the US).

I was certainly sad to leave London and Europe in general. The month before our departure date I looked at everything I did on a daily basis and tried to soak it all in as much as possible. Just the simple things like riding the tube every day, my walk from the tube to work, walking to the grocery store in my neighborhood, taking the girls to the park. All of those things became just a bit sentimental to me in those final days.

But we are now back home in the Bay Area and settled into a house we love and in a neighborhood we love. We’ve seen our friends and had family come visit and it’s a reminder as to why we moved back. It’s certainly a change though. For the first weeks after we moved back, whenever we’d go somewhere Josephine would always ask “Mommy, are we driving or walking there?” and I had to break it to her that from now on, most likely we would be driving everywhere. I too miss all of the walking from our life in Europe. But it does feel good to be home and there is a certain familiarity about it all. It's comfortable.

I will always cherish the experience we had in Europe. The countless cities and countries we got to visit, the friends we made while there that we will have for a lifetime, the numerous visitors whom we got to share our life with, all of it! And even though our European adventure has come to an end for now, deep down I don’t think that’s the last time we’ll be living there. It’s hard to predict the future but I feel we may be drawn back at some point again down the road. At least I hope we find ourselves back there again someday.

Some highlights from the past 7 years...