Stockholm

It was another one of those weeks where I traveled to Zurich and Oslo for work and Nate was in Helsinki so we figured we’d take advantage of being in the Nordics and visit one of the cities up there for the weekend.  Since Nate is up there quite often, I asked him to pick the best one out of Helsinki, Copenhagen, Oslo and Stockholm.  He suggested Stockholm eventhough he said all of the cities would be great choices.  So after my travels to Zurich (which was strange and familiar all at the same time but felt so great being back) and Oslo, I was off to Stockholm Thursday evening.  I worked from our Stockholm office that Friday and met up with Nate Friday evening.  It was finally the weekend!

The weather was a bit chilly and rainy all weekend but we were off to make the best of it.  Friday night we explored a bit of the old town on Gamla stan, grabbed a drink and had dinner.  One thing about Stockholm, and the Nordics in general, is that speaking English is never a problem.  Everyone there knows English and they speak it very well.  So from that perspective, it was a bit of a language vacation for us as well.  

Right outside City Hall

Saturday we were up and off to City Hall for the tour.  Stockholm is the home of the Nobel prize awards ceremony. The ceremony takes place at Stockholm Concert Hall and the banquet takes place in City Hall.  While we were on the tour of City Hall we saw the giant hall, which they call the “Blue Room”, where they host the big banquet dinner.  We also saw the “Golden Hall” where the dancing takes place.  It was pretty cool to see and quite pretty both inside and out.  City Hall sits right on the water which makes for lovely views.

We were then headed back to Gamla stan to check out the Nobel Museum (pretty cool....it highlights all of the Nobel prize winners and talks about Mr. Alfred Nobel himself, the founder of the prize), Stockholm Cathedral and the Royal Palace.  We walked around, shopped and had dinner in a nice local neighborhood and before we knew it, were on a plane the next morning headed back to Paris.  

It was a quick but very pleasant weekend and was a good chance to get a feel for Stockholm, check it out and enjoy some Swedish meatballs.  I think it’s a beautiful city and it feels very “European” to me with the buildings and cobblestone streets.  Nate says I should join him back there again in February when I can get a true sense of winter in the Nordic region.  Uh, yeah....meet you there babe!

It's not a full vacation but….

Hey, we'll take it!  Taking 3 days off work while not quite as good as a whole week and definitely not as good as two, is still a very good thing given how busy things have been.  Two people who did take the whole week off to join us in Paris and the South of France were our friends Ehren and Julie coming from DC.  Julie having lived in Paris for a year herself was excited to be back and show us a few of her favorite places in town.  

Arriving early on Saturday morning and after getting a refresher nap in, we started out on a gorgeous afternoon to do one of everyone's favorite things to do in Paris - Go to a park with cheese, wine, and meats to sit in the sun and simply enjoy.  Meeting up with some of Julie's friends in the Jardin de Tuileries we spent several hours outside in the park before moving on to spend that evening sitting along Canal Saint Martin which was packed end to end with people given just how nice the weather was.  Literally the best weather all summer long.

Jardin des Tuileries

After a nice lazy Sunday Ehren and Julie left Paris on their own for a few nights in the South of France while we worked the first few days that week.  Cleaver and I left Paris Wednesday morning on the train to the town of Nimes where Ehren and Julie picked us up on our way to île de Porquerolles which is a little island town just off the coast.  On our way from Nimes we stopped in a medieval town of Arles for lunch.  We then headed to Hyeres on the coast where Porquerolles was a short 15 minute ferry ride away.  It's a small town with a nice little town square and several beaches you could reach easily en velo (or bike). 

île de Porquerolles

Our few days there were quite relaxing, starting with a breakfast we made in our hotel room, then renting bikes and heading out to the various beaches.  The first day we found this great little cove where we just sat and took in the scenery for a bit.  Leisurely we worked our way back to town by late afternoon for happy hour consisting of the usual bread, cheese, wine combination before heading out for dinner.

Looking out over the water

The island had maybe 15 or so different restaurants and given that we were there in the middle of the week post-vacation time in France it was all fairly empty which added to the relaxing feeling we had.  We enjoyed this lifestyle for a few days before heading back to Paris on Saturday morning.  I would be remiss without mentioning on this train ride back to Paris that we had probably the loudest screaming crying baby right next to us for the entire ride.  This was unpleasant.  Very unpleasant.  But let's not dwell on that and just move on.

Back in Paris Saturday night for one last outing before Ehren and Julie had to head back home on Sunday after a great week in France!

Mischief and Mayhem - Just a day in Burgundy

Well after all of the craziness going on in our lives these past few months, we finally had a day where we could go explore beyond Paris.  Louis was in town....a quick weekend stopover in Paris between work trips in Portugal and Geneva....and he had a request that we leave Paris and explore somewhere else.  After presenting a few options, we decided on Dijon and the region of Burgundy.  More specifically, we went to Beaune which is a small town about a 20 minute train ride from Dijon.  We did just a day trip although if we had it to do all over again, I think we’d be better off spending the night.  We headed out on the TGV early on Saturday morning and just a little over 2 hours later, we were in Beaune.  It was a chilly day but at least it wasn’t raining, which was good because our plan was to rent bikes and explore the wine region of Burgundy.  Our friends Stacey and Alex recommended a bike shop in Beaune and Cedric (the guy who worked at the shop) helped us out by not only renting us bikes but also giving us some great suggestions on where to go for both tastings and lunch.  We headed off on our bikes and shortly after leaving the small town, we found ourselves amidst the vineyards of Burgundy.  It was pretty amazing and surreal.  I mean here it was just a regular old Saturday and we were bike riding through Burgundy.  Amazing!

We just happened upon a small little winery called Mischief and Mayhem where the lady was from the UK and spent some time telling us a bit about the wine region.  The wines were only ok although Nate and I bought a courtesy bottle.  The strangest part at this winery was when this lady poured us the reds she told us that she wasn’t sure how long they had been open and if they would be any good since she hadn’t been in the tasting room for a while.  Umm, ok?  Perhaps she wasn’t interested in really selling wine and more interested in getting to her lunch (after all, the wineries all close from about 12:00 to 1:30/2:00 for lunch).  So yeah, as nice as she was, it didn’t leave a great impression.

We headed off to our lunch at a restaurant recommended by Cedric.  It was a very homey feel of a restaurant and very typical French food.  The meal was delicious and we met a fellow bike traveler visiting from Boston.  All in all, a very lovely lunch.

We were back on our bikes and ready to explore and find another winery.  We again just happened across this one winery that seemed interesting.  It was called Edmond Cornu & Fils.  A lady greeted us and took us down into the wine cellar where she proceeded to pour us a few tastings.  Now she didn’t speak any English but luckily Louis is French Canadian and therefore could help translate.  She spent quite a bit of time with us and the wines were fantastic...as evidenced by the 7 bottles we bought between the 3 of us.  And we would have bought more too but there was only so many we could fit into that empty backpack we brought along.  It was overall a great experience and she even gave us a special taste of their Corton Grand Cru.  We are all still kicking ourselves for not making room to buy a few bottles of this one.  

Nate & Louis learning all about the region from this sweet lady

In any case, we had a wonderful experience here and in fact spent so much time there that we needed to start heading back to the bike shop to return our bikes and catch our train back to Dijon and then Paris.  Again, it would have been great to have had more time....there is so much to explore!!  We were mainly in the Aloxe-Corton and Ladoix areas but the southern part of the region was highly recommended as well.  I think it will definitely be on our list of places to head back to.  All in all it was a brilliant day and one that I think we will all remember for a long time to come.

9-1

“9 -1-1 is a joke in your town” is a little shout out to those of you who appreciate some good old fashioned late 80’s militant rap which in this case may have also come complete with a giant clock.  What may also be a joke starting with “9-1” is the month of September, as in how can it possibly be September 1?  Been awhile since we contributed to the interwebs, kept meaning to for about the last 6 weeks, but what can I say, it’s been busy!

So what have we been up to? Um, well, more than just a nice little Saturday so to speak.  As most people by now know, at the beginning of July (yeah, like 2 months ago, I know) we left the friendly confines of Zurich, Switzerland and made the move to the big city of Paris.  As has been documented on this blog we loved our time in Switzerland but were faced with the choice to either come home to SF or move to Paris.  It wasn’t a difficult choice.

Having obtained the necessary paperwork, off we went and thus begins our past two months.  Start with the arrival at a new city / temporary apartment.  Nothing to really note regarding the temporary apartment, wasn’t bad by any means but not too exciting either, other than some creative engineering on the appliances (see stove from previous blog).

Finding this place to be nothing more than ok and obviously temporary, we then had our day of apartment searching with a person we worked with directly to get us set up.  A full day of looking at 8 different places and naturally the first one of the day was the one we liked the best.  We still could not move in for a few more weeks but at least got a place secured and could check that off the long list of things to do after a few rounds of back and forth with the property agent and owner, took some time but we got it done

Next up – Bank account.  This should be easy, open account, deposit money, get ATM cards, on line set up, and off you go.  Not so fast mon ami.  They make this process much more difficult than it needs to be by forcing you to come into the bank twice and receive codes via mail that may never arrive.  So this took about 4 weeks to do what should taken about 4 minutes.  But we’re set up, so moving on.

Work – since neither of us had any changes to our jobs, just simply working in a different office, this one was pretty straight forward.  Well except for me and the visa / transfer process.  I would tell you more but honestly, it was so painful I just can’t relive it.  Maybe sometime later on over a beer or two I can fill you in, but for now let’s just say we’re both settled in at our new offices and work is going along just fine now that we’re here.

Moving day – relatively painless getting into our new place on August 1, took all of our suitcases, got the keys, had the rest of our stuff from Zurich delivered and we’re in.  Still took a few weeks to get settled in, buy all the little things you always need when moving into a new place and finally as of about a week ago, starting to feel like home.

About a week after moving in we needed to take a week and go back to San Francisco and get our life there in order, meaning packing up our apartment and moving all our stuff into storage in SF.  This week in SF was great, very good to be home, but a very busy few days of packing, moving, property manager meeting and taking care of all that we could to keep things organized.  Our apartment in SF is now being rented by someone – so for those of you who stayed there the past year without us knowing because you got a key from somebody else – don’t go back.  Somebody else lives there now.  You have been warned.

Week in SF, make the trip back to Paris, back to work, work trip that week in late August blah blah blah and that friend is how two months goes by and we get to 9-1 without even realizing it. 

So one last question – when does summer vacation start?  Doh!

Paris

Well so far we are slowly getting settled into life here in Paris.  It’s now been about two weeks since we moved here.  We’re currently in temporary housing near the Saint Lazare train station.  It’s not the most exciting neighborhood but it is relatively close to our offices so that part is nice.  About a week ago, Nate and I spent the day with our home search consultant looking at apartments.  And when I say the day, I mean the full day.  We started at 10am and after looking at 8 different places, finished at about 6pm.  It was one exhausting day.  But the good news is that we found a place we liked, in an area that we think we’ll enjoy and that many people recommended.  We’re hoping all continues to go well and that we will sign the contract next week and get everything squared away for a move-in date of August 1.  Yay!!  We could not be more thrilled or excited to get settled into a permanent place and finally get comfortable here.  Our temporary accommodations are overall fine however there are a few things that just make it frustrating.  It’s small, for one, with no storage space.  So we’re pretty much living out of a suitcase with just one closet.  The bathroom is literally a part of the bedroom which is not ideal when one wants to sleep and the other is taking a shower right there in the room with you.  It’s a bit bizarre I must say.  And it makes this temporary place just not conducive for guests.  Oh and then the Parisians must love space saving appliances as we have a stove/oven/dishwasher all in one (see picture).  This also is a bit bizarre.  So in any case, while this place is most definitely sufficient, we cannot wait to get settled into our permanent place.

Is it a stove? Is it an oven? Is it a dishwasher?

Waiting for fireworks

I’ve also started settling in at the office.  The great news is that nothing about my actual job and the role itself changed.  So with all of the other change happening in our lives, it’s nice to have one thing that stays the same.  Everyone in my office has been extremely nice and welcoming.  It’s funny how they ask if I speak French and when I tell them no, I get this very concerned and confused look.  As if how could I survive here in France without speaking French.  I usually quickly follow it up with the fact that I’m currently trying to learn and that I really do want to speak French and that seems to make it all better.  

Speaking of the language, it is much different than being in Zurich from an English perspective.  In Zurich, English was no problem at all.  95% of the people you encountered all spoke English, and quite decent English at that.  Here in Paris it’s much different.  In just two weeks, I have had multiple occurrences where the person on the other side of the counter didn’t speak any English at all.  We managed to get by, of course, but it’s definitely a bit more challenging.  But that’s totally fine with me....I don’t expect by any means that they should be able to speak English for me.  I actually look at this as a great opportunity to learn French more quickly....hopefully!  Like I said, Nate and I both are really eager to learn the language here and are practicing as much as we can.  

Overall Nate and I are truly loving being in Paris.  We are definitely grateful that things worked out the way they did allowing us to move to this amazing city.  I think we’re going to be very very happy here!  I do love me a big city and although it took a few days to get back into “city” mode, I’m loving every second of it.  And what a great city it is!!  Yesterday was Bastille Day and one of the things they do to celebrate here in Paris is a fireworks show at the Eiffel Tower.  Nate and I spent the afternoon exploring a new neighborhood, Le Marais, and then at about 9:30 headed towards Place de la Concorde to get a spot to watch the show.  We waited for probably an hour but we couldn’t be happier.  I sat there just staring at the Eiffel Tower, all lit up, and kept telling myself that this is my new city.  Pretty amazing!!  Like I said, I think we’re going to be pretty darn happy here.

Happy Bastille Day!

Une pierre qui roule n'amasse pas mousse

They say, well somebody did anyway, that a rolling stone gathers no moss. I can safely say that in my life I have now lived in two places where I don't care how much you move around, your gonna grow some moss. Having lived in Eugene, Oregon and now finishing my time Zurich, Switzerland, these two place have one (and only one) single thing in common - Rain. And lots of it. I guess this expression also has something to do with metaphors about not doing one thing for too long or not allowing yourself to get into a rut. Clearly the past year for us has been a mostly "moss free" zone.

So as we close the 1st chapter on this European adventure and head on to l'herbe plus verte, we can safely say that our time in Zurich has never been dull and nothing short of special.

Here we are on July 4, 2012 of all dates packing up the last of our stuff, had our last days in our respective Zurich offices, turning in the keys to the apartment, and finalizing affairs in Zurich. We now turn the page to chapter 2 in Paris.

We have now said about a million times that we would have been more than happy to stay in Zurich because if you have read this blog at all over the past year you would know just how nice, clean, efficient, and amazing we think Switzerland is. It really is amazing. But that said, the opportunity to move to Paris presented itself and through choice, chance, or otherwise, we are very excited to make the change and discover what France's version of P-town is all about.

The village of Rapperswil from the ferry

Before moving on, we would be remiss not to recap the final few cheese fueled adventures in Switzerland. Let us start with a few weeks back on one of the first truly "summer" weather weekends of the year. And by summer, I mean hot and muggy, shorts 24 hours a day type weather. Having a lazy weekend with time to kill we decided to take the ferry ride down the lake from Zurich at the north end of "Zurich See" to the south part of the lake where you will find a little village called Rapperswil. For some reason we thought this boat ride would take about an hour and be the perfect little jaunt to the town where we could walk around a bit, find a drink and take in the scenery. However this zig-zag across and down the lake took more like 2 and a half hours. We figured we must have been on the wrong boat. Our bad, but at least it was warm and pleasant out on the water. Once we finally got to Rapperswil we did check out the little town, walk up to some pretty lookout point, and did find that drink outside on a plaza. Next to a McDonald's. Though a very charming one nonetheless. We took the train back to Zurich, like Domino's pizza - 30 minutes or less to get there.

That's the cheese advertising car,
three huge chunks of cheese on the top

Sunday was a nice day and we decided to take the short train ride to the town of Zug where the Tour de Suisse would be coming through around lunch time. This is a bicycle race that is a warm up to the Tour de France and I thought would be cool to see. We were waiting on the side of the road for a bit, it's almost like a parade with cars going by that are part of the race but actually just advertising. Then the actual racers come by in about 20 seconds followed by 37 cars with bikes attached to the top. It was fun but they do go by quickly. After that, we found a place for lunch before heading home.

Riders coming through!

The next weekend being our final weekend in Zurich was a nice relaxing Friday having dinner at home on our balcony before our friend Louis arrived on Saturday evening. Louis was coming in from Paris where he had been for work, en route to Germany for more work the following week and found a Saturday night in his schedule to stop by Zurich. He arrived a bit late in the evening on Saturday but that didn't stop us from having a late dinner out and hitting a few of our favorite spots one last time. INTERPOL laws prohibit us from disclosing what time we made it home that night. If I recall, it did rain at one point.

A short one night stay and Louis was off on Sunday to Berlin and we had to begin sorting and packing our stuff up anyway. It rained on Sunday which made for good packing weather. Oh by the way at this point I still had not received my French visa, so unclear how much longer I would need to stay in Zurich. But we knew that Cleaver would be leaving the following weekend regardless and the movers would be shipping our stuff that coming Friday. Time once again to be transitory for a bit which is not fun but what can you do. Price you pay for for being an international couple of mystery.

With the shippers coming on Friday morning, the Thursday before what do you know but I get the call that my Visa is ready to go! Sounds good right? One anticipated problem however, this required a trip to Geneva where the French consulate is located to actually pick up my Visa. One unanticipated problem, I got this call at 2:30 on Thursday afternoon that my appointment in Geneva would be Friday morning at 8:30 am. So - shut down at work, head home, scramble to complete the packing and hop the next train to Geneva. Only about 2 and half hours on the train so not too bad, but between the timing, train, staying in a hotel, and the train ride back on Friday, that's a lot for 30 minutes actually spent at the consulate. At least in Geneva it wasn't raining.

So fast forward a few days and here we are. Cleaver has been in Paris for a few nights already, I'm on the train (première classe est bonne!) to Paris with Zurich now in the rear view mirror. Sorry to leave but excited for what's ahead!

Has it been a year already?

Hard to believe that almost one year ago to the day, we moved to Zurich.  The assignment was for one year and man has this year flown by.  We tried to see and do as much as we could exploring Zurich, Switzerland and the rest of Europe.  And I’d have to say that we’ve done a pretty good job.  But Europe is a big place and there is just so much more to see.  I feel like it's just the tip of the iceberg.  So what I’m basically saying is that one year was not long enough to live in Europe and that’s why we’ve decided to stay at least one more year.  The only catch is that we weren’t able to stay in Zurich (there were some office space issues for me at Google) so we’re off to Paris!  I have basically localized here and will become a French employee at Google.  Eventhough I’m heading to the Google Paris office I will still be doing the same exact job as I have been doing all year.  I’ll just come off of assignment and become a local employee.  

Nate’s company continues to be extremely flexible with him and his job so he had no problem transferring to the Thomson Reuters Paris office as well.  In fact, they probably welcomed it since it’s most likely more expensive for them to employ him here in Switzerland.  In any case, they are flexible which really works out well for us.  

Here’s the situation, I now have my French visa and am moving to Paris on Saturday, June 30.  Just a week away!  Nate’s company is processing his French visa for him and was a little bit slower in the process.  Therefore Nate is just waiting on one more approval before he can go pick up his visa at the French Consulate in Geneva.  It’s possible that this could all happen next week, which would be great as Nate could then come out there with me.  But if not, I’m thinking he should only be a week behind me.  

And then once we get to Paris, the fun part of moving to a new country begins.  We will be in temporary housing for up to 60 days so will start looking for an apartment (luckily we have the help of a home search consultant), we need to get our residence visas, open a bank account, apply for a social security number, etc.  The fun doesn’t end.  We look forward to being settled so that we can start to fully enjoy Paris!

We are both extremely excited for this opportunity to live in and explore Paris and get to know it as a local.  We are sad to leave Zurich and would have been just as happy to stay here.  But I suppose things happen for a reason and now our European adventure continues in Paris.  

We have loved Zurich though and Switzerland in general.  As we may have mentioned in previous posts, you can’t beat the quality of life here.  Nate calls it the country club.  It’s clean, the air is fresh, everything is so organized and on time, the mountains are super close (Nate will definitely miss being just an hour away from skiing).....overall it’s an absolutely wonderful place to live.  Paris should be an interesting change.  For one thing, I keep hearing how the French hate the Americans and refuse to speak English.  The Google Paris office is definitely less International than Zurich so there will probably be less English and more French spoken among the cubes.  That’s ok though.  We are in it for the experience and are ready to immerse ourselves in everything French.  In fact, we have both already started Rosetta Stone.  Nate at least took some French in college where I’ve never had any classes in it.  We are hoping to get to a conversational level at the minimum and not embarrass ourselves.  We shall see.

In any case, Paris here we come!!!  Let the adventure continue!  

Auf Wiedersehen Zurich and Bonjour Paris!