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Cozy Christmas in the Cotswolds
I really did think I’d get to writing about our trip a little sooner than this, but there has been lots going on, which I hope to fill you in on soon! For now, as a fitting adieu to the winter season, we pick off where we left off, shortly before Christmas, picking up our rental car at Paddington Station and setting off westwards towards the Cotswolds – a beautiful natural area west of Oxford where you can find a network of picturesque villages and all the beautiful countryside you might imagine. When you leave London and head northwest, there are a number of nice places of touristic value that…
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The Holiday Season in London (Pandemic Edition)
Like I’m sure many travelers before me, the idea to spend Christmas in England came to me years ago upon a re-watch of The Holiday. How perfect could it be to spend the holidays in a cottage somewhere in the foggy countryside? I shared this vision with my family and in summer 2019, my mother announced that we were doing it! We were going to spend Christmas 2020 in England! Of course that wasn’t exactly good timing, but having already booked a cottage in the Cotswolds (an “area of outstanding natural beauty” just northwest of Oxford full of picturesque villages to explore) in early 2020 before the pandemic and unable…
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A Time of Simple Holidays
Well, it’s hard to write anything without a computer, isn’t it? Fortunately I feel like I have an office again, a little home again, and my brain can sort of organize itself properly. (Note: Try to avoid ever having to purchase a new computer in mid-December. It is not the time.) Here we are in December, finally at the tail end of 2020. Funny about this year. As I’ve now been quite settled in České Budějovice for nearly eight years and counting, there isn’t a lot of expat stuff or cultural differences that I feel compelled to write about. Most of it is no longer so novel. Add to that…
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An Austrian Alpine Holiday
As it’s the last weekend of the holiday season, so a perfect opportunity to share a little bit about 2019’s holiday season and our Christmas spent in the Salzkammergut. Before we left, we had a nice relaxing weekend wrapping up the work year and taking in some tunes and last punches in our beautiful square. On our way home from doing some Saturday morning errands, I noticed a tree in the park near our house full of fruits and things tied on with a sign. (Below, with the message “Christmas tree for homeless people – Have a beautiful Christmas”) I love when whimsy and kindness intersect and to see this…
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This Festive Season
Sometimes people ask me if I’m going back to the States for Christmas and the answer always seems to be… no. Don’t get me wrong, I deeply enjoy being back in my hometown for the holidays, away from the big city bustle. Every year when we would get on that on-ramp away from Seattle, there was something incredibly peaceful about driving north on I-5 and watching the sprawl slip away. Driving around the island on Christmas Day, Sufjan Stevens‘ album always playing on the car stereo. The white skies, tall evergreens, the sea. Again, I have to use the word peaceful, but a certain, specific peace only this kind of…
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a simpler sort of christmas
hello all, i hope you have had a magical christmas wherever in the world you celebrated it, if you are in fact celebrating, that is. once again, we had a truly czech christmas here in budejovice. normally we get almost two full weeks of holiday for christmas, and we opted to stay put this year mostly because 1) iceland, which i felt was almost like a christmas in and of itself, but also 2) our visa issues (from receiving it to reapplying for our next) making us a bit lighter in the wallet this time of year. but no matter, we had decided to fully embrace a simpler sort of…
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hello, winter
hi! solstice greetings! do you like to do anything to observe the solstice? every year in summer, we have a picnic that i like to try and make go on for as long as possible. but in the winter, it’s about turning more inward. ideally, i would go for a walk in the woods and soak up every bit of those precious sun rays that shortest day of the year (some nature element is important here – to connect with the earth), and then spend the evening indoors watching a movie lighting all the candles in the house. one particular winter solstice (our first in europe) it happened also to…
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december, lately: a lot going on at the moment.
whoa, what a big few weeks it has been! in the wake of receiving our visa extention in october, alex and i had been furiously studying to make sure we aced our elementary level czech exam, which is far too expensive to re-take (not that we even have the time to do so) but fortunately, three and a half hours later, we victoriously walked to the bus stop with our certificates! we did it! not going to lie, but this little (big?) victory has instilled some major confidence. i think it is deserved confidence, for all those times that i doubted myself and didn’t want to try speaking czech, or…
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christmas in the bavarian alps
i hope you had a wonderful christmas and are still enjoying the holiday season! as i mentioned in my last post, we zipped away for five days to enjoy christmas in berchtesgaden, germany which is nestled literally between bavarian alps on every side and has a lovely and historical downtown. i’ve wanted to visit this town for years… really only a couple train rides from our little budejovice. berchtesgaden is only about fifteen kilometers from salzburg (really, just over the austrian border). you can take a regional bus from salzburg to get to berchtesgaden in fifty minutes, which is what we decided to do on the way there – it was…
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in the bleak mid-winter
fair warning: this is not exactly a “feel good” holiday post, but one full of “living life vibes”. this year has been one i will remember. mostly for good reasons, but it’s been a sad past week. this was the year that i went to my first czech wedding (reception), first celebration of new babies that were born, and sadly, also my first czech funeral. (hopefully my last, but you never can be sure). what i think it means is that i am living life. life is happening right now. i celebrated new life, i celebrated the joining of two lives, and mourned the loss of a friend and student of mine.…
