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august in berlin, week two
happy september (aka “back to hogwarts” day), friends! i am relishing this anything-but-lazy saturday morning, planning to tidy a bit, do my first bake along with this year’s great british bake off which just started this week, and finally, some work continuing my german studies. in order to finish the current textbook i’m revising and working through by the time i start again with my lessons, i’ve calculated i have to do one textbook unit every three days… challenge accepted! so it is “back to books” a bit this month for me. anyone else going “back to school” somehow? continuing speaking about august in berlin experience – catch up on week one here.week…
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august, lately: the first week in berlin
phewww. what a month! i didn’t have time to write this past month (save for that one post about traveling with your dog – check it out if you missed it!) because from the beginning of august, i was immersed in a berlin-language study-do all the things whirlwind! i left my inbox almost fully unattended until i couldn’t possibly put things off any longer while we were away for most of august in berlin, i working on my studies and alex starting his next writing project on his pretty portable olivetta lettera (above) he dragged all the way from budejovice in this sweet little kollwitzkiez flat that i termed “the treehouse” because of…
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traveling with your dog: what to know
we got our ferdinand mostly because of his breed and size (but chose him specifically for his extremely calm temperament). with an on-the-go lifestyle, we needed a dog we could take everywhere… and we do! he only weighs four kilos (about 9 lbs) so he’s easy to travel with. one of the first things we did when we got him was obtain his doggie passport. many people who saw this photo were baffled: “dogs have passports?” the answer, as far as living in the EU is, yes, but it doesn’t seem absolutely required. they are available, but i’ve noticed the information is exactly the same as in his medical booklet the breeder…
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summer reclaimed (& this month’s travels)
i have a lot to say lately, it seems! so far, this has been, by and large, a good summer. but the day after the solstice, i found out some immigration news that has made me become an incredibly stressed person for the next month. i was able to mitigate this stress while on vacation in france by just sort of hitting pause and enjoying the holiday we had planned for so, so many months. that’s the thing about worry: it’s stupid. either you can either do something about it, or you can’t. if you can do something, do that thing. if you can’t, don’t worry. especially when you spend…
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postcards from arles
bonjour… from the czech republic. i wanted to share with you a little more of our recent trip to provence, and then i realized that i had so many photos of arles in particular. this picturesque city really seemed to merit a post itself. we started our trip by renting a car* at the marseille provence airport and heading straight to arles. i had originally hoped to see a handful of little towns on the way up north to our cottage in the drôme but arles turned out to be enough as it was. this lovely and very historical city (a great stop if you are into roman ruins sites in southern…
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provencal vacation + our cottage
why, hello there. i think this is the longest i’ve gone without a post in the six year history of this blog. that’s owing to a culmination of a very busy june calendar, finishing the end of the school year and the fêtes that go along with it + visa stuff + a long-planned ten day vacation to provence! believe it or not, i was on the computer, only ten minutes until we had to go trying to get a post out, but it would’ve been all rushed and harried and no one wants that. plus, we didn’t bring any computers with us! so there you go. i know i…
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chateau birthday
there’s a place about an hour northeast of prague in the middle of central bohemia where there stands a hill that has had both christian and pagan significance for hundreds and hundreds of years. finally a chateau was built on this spot, overlooking the valley below and a family lived there until 1948. it sat unoccupied until the early-aughts when a czech woman bought the decrepit chateau and fixed it up, meanwhile happening to fall in love with an american man who had entrepreneurial visions of what this space could one day become. today that place is called chateau mcely, and it’s exactly where i spent a few completely relaxing…
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the place i can’t get out of my head
i don’t know where my obsession with iceland came from… because it is an obsession, full-blown. maybe it was in college at some point when an acquaintance of mine did a one month seminar in reykjavik in the mid-aughts. it was the first time i had ever heard of someone going to reykjavik, besides that one time the mighty ducks went there to play the “evil icelanders” in D2: the mighty ducks. but i digress. i became quickly enchanted with even the idea of visiting this island that met all of my criteria for a fascination: isolated. island. big enough, but not too big. a mysterious history steeped in myth.…
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still learning travel lessons, in brno
i am learning to be a minimal packer, and i’m starting to feel pretty good about it. when i go on a trips for just a night or two, i can fit everything in a normal-sized backpack, for sure. i even pride myself on certain packing choices, for instance, my tiny slipper socks. i bring those for some extra comfort on the road, because sometimes you need something between winter boots and socks for padding around the room or property. also, my lightweight cotton bathrobe. easily doubling as an after-swim cover-up, it’s much nicer to throw on over pajamas or underwear when you need to run out to the shared…
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my anxiety: how it’s going
i never knew what a panic attack was until the year before moving to europe, 2011. earlier that year, i had experienced the worst airline turbulence of my life…. alone… in the middle seat… on my way home from my grandma’s funeral in minnesota. it was so bad, i can barely talk about it. this is about as much detail as i can give. after this happened, i started driving like an eighty-year old woman and began feeling very uncomfortable riding in the car with a fast driver or going too fast on any transport in any circumstances. my fear of heights shot up from “pretty bad” to “nearly crippling”.…
