Location:  Europe

Author:  Pete

Writing this post is helping me to feel not quite so much like a chump.  I’ve been feeling a little under-adventured.  Who’d have guessed, right?  This semester is quickly coming to a close and it doesn’t feel like we’ve done much besides keep our heads above water in a new apartment, school, and country.  But assembling the shots from the past months is just the ticket to shut my whiny mouth!

 

We started off the year running with my folks visiting!  Having visitors is always a good way to make you slow down and appreciate the place you live.  We spent time walking around cute Zug, finding our orientation around a new town together.

 

Just a few weeks into the first semester our school sends the students out on Personal Development Week to spread their wings and stretch their boundaries.  I deemed it prudent to weasel my way into a group taking students onto the high seas in the Netherlands, sailing the Zuiderzee on nineteenth-century sail ships.

 

Miranda and I bought a fancy car and have been making good use of it.  It’s striking to travel so fast!  We’ve been up to Frankfurt twice to see my niece!  Both trips we filled the trunk with cases of German beer.  The smuggling continues!

 

We’ve also explored the Alps close by with my parents.  Our school has a chalet in Wengen, near Interlaken, so we braved the switchbacked roads and got ourselves some alpine hiking in, overlooking quaint Swiss towns tucked into the valleys.

 

Over our fall break we drove five hours to the in Cinque Terre region in Italy.  We rented an apartment overlooking the Med, touristed around the seaside villages, and took a great cooking class in Lucca!  Five hours is the distance we used to drive from Charlevoix to get to Detroit a couple times a year!

 

We used Miranda’s birthday as a good excuse to drive into France over a weekend for a fall color tour. Belfort, just over the border from us, held an antiques market which splattered in the main square and oozed out into the winding streets.  We rummaged around for treasures and engorged ourselves on French pastry delights.

 

So there we go.  Sailing in the Netherlands, a new niece in Germany, cooking in Cinque Terre, Italy, exploring the Alps with my folks, and rummaging through French markets.  All in a semester’s work.  It’s getting colder now in Switzerland.  We’ve been getting dustings of snow that ices the bergs for a few days here and there.  I haven’t touched real snow in at least two years.

 

Oh… and Miranda’s pregnant!