Lessons Learned: 3 Years in Lux

1. Dress up more. Jeans don't count. I never really got good at this. Jeans and a T-shirt still constitute a solid daily outfit choice for me. But I think I did a little better on a more regular basis. And that makes me feel like a proper grown-up.

2. Bicycle in a suit and / or high heels if you want. I saw people do this all the time. They looked darn good doing it, and I tipped my hat to them.

3. Don't be afraid of narrow roads. The planning meetings for Luxembourg city transportation must have gone like this:
Gustav: "We've only got really narrow streets to work with. Let's make sure our city buses aren't too wide or lumbering."
Council: "Nah, let's make the buses huge. HUGE."
Gustav: "Okay, well, the council has spoken. All city buses from here on out will be gigantic."
We lowly car drivers must face these facts with courage. The buses will eventually win. But not today. Not on my watch. After I leave, probably.

4. If you're going to be a short-term expat (2-5 years), put your kids in international school. If you can afford it. If not, local school won't kill them. We've done both and I think my kids will live to be responsible, civil, well-adjusted adults. (Fingers crossed!!) I wouldn't say I regret our school choice for the kids for the first two years. Local school was our best option at the time. But if I could go back, I'd have done more research and talked to more people beforehand and tried to better understand our options.

5. Own fewer, nicer clothes and wear the same outfit twice in a row. I observed some very stylish women wear the same exact outfit several times in the same week. Mind blown. No shame people. Own nice things, take care of them, and rock them often.

6. Wear navy and black together. Do it. You'll look chic.

7. Hang more things out to dry. Most Europeans don't own dryers. It's made me realize that the dryer is where the clothes get ruined. Not the washer. So, air dry more.

8. Towel heaters offer nirvana. I hated the towel warmer in my bathroom at first. It's ugly, it takes up half the wall, it's unnecessary. But here's where the Europeans make up for not having a dryer. It can dry a bunch of random things pretty quick without the dryer damage. And wrapping yourself in a towel fresh off the heater after a shower in a drafty bathroom in the middle of winter is a luxurious sensation I'll never forget.

9. Chocolate for breakfast is fine. I've finally made peace with the fact that half of all cereal sold in Luxembourg is full of chocolate.  If you want chocolate shavings in your granola, whatever dude. If you want chocolate sprinkles on your toast in the morning, go ahead. If you want to spread Nutella on everything, you'll probably be happier than the average human. It's not for me, but I will no longer judge you. Ok, fine, my daughter drinks hot cocoa every morning. And my son eats some kind of chocolate/vanilla garbage cereal every morning. And sometimes I do, too. Ok, this morning I had a croissant dipped in Nutella and an amazing cup of hot chocolate. Stop judging me! Geez.

10. Fresh baked bread is non-negotiable. I don't know how I'm going to keep this one up. My best idea is to start a fresh bread bakery in Seattle. That's it. That's my best idea. I don't know who else is going to do it. Can somebody please do it? Pllleeeeeaaassse?

11. Subsidized healthcare = less stress. It's a tiny country. It can't be compared to larger countries. The taxes are high. But when you go to the doctor or take your kid to the doctor, any doctor, you know that it'll all work out to be a fairly small bill in the end. It just feels a little less stressful going into it. Awwww, now, don't high taxes feel nice?

12. Don't be mad about paid parking. It's a normal part of life. Also, don't be embarrassed to ask how to pay for the parking.

13. Don't be mad about speeding tickets. The traffic cameras in France and Germany will always get you and you'll arrive home from your trip with a crisp, new ticket in the mail (or two!). Just work it into your travel budget.

14. Don't be ashamed your French was never good. Actually, I am ashamed. But I'm telling myself not to be. Because so many people spoke excellent English. They enabled me! Dang you multi-lingual Europeans. You bring me too much shame and ease.

15. Worker 1st, customer 2nd. Euro-peeps in the service industry get a bad rap. "Bad customer service!" is a main complaint of Americans traveling in Europe. But the thing is, their workers come first and the customers come second. Workers have good pay and shorter hours. Most people get Sundays off. They work to live, we live to work ... and make others work around the clock for us. It's just a difference in values. It's not so bad. Just keep those expectations low, don't buy anything you expect to return, and someday you may be thrilled when a waiter actually acts like they're happy to have you in their restaurant.

16. Work to live. Speaking of working to live! It's really nice. I think some companies are moving in this direction in the States (better maternity/paternity leave, more vacation time, more flexible sick and personal days off) but, like I said, it's just a difference in values and expectations. What do we as a society value? Americans have a "work hard, play hard" mentality ... but what if there could be a mentality of "work hard, and then take more time to truly relax"? I think the Europeans are better balanced this way.

17. Simplify mealtime.  I love to cook and bake and I love trying new recipes. But then I moved to Luxembourg and realized half of the meals in my usual rotation were Mexican-inspired. That was not gonna work in this town. Trying new recipes in general also never worked well. So I had to make simple meals for three years. And guess what? We all survived. But I'm reeeeeaaaaallllly excited to eat loads of Mexican food again.

18. Nix billboards. Not that I have any control over this. But driving through an entire country (France, Belgium, Germany, say) without seeing billboards is so pleasant. Nature before commercialism. It's a beautiful thing.

Open Letter to Airbnb Hosts

We’ve stayed in dozens of Airbnbs all over Europe and we don’t regret it. They’re affordable, off the beaten path, offer an authentic “live like a local” experience, and have walls and doors (go to bed, kids!), and kitchens (we’ll eat in tonight), and neighbors who use drills at 10 pm (dang you, concrete walls that make a drill sound like a jackhammer baby who screams a lot). Oh and don’t forget the character! Airbnbs are chalk full of character. Which can sometimes be fun and sometimes leave you with the sense that you just stayed in some eccentric hoarder’s house who has a penchant for the nude female form (I’m looking at you, Hugo, and ps, I don’t blame you a bit because you made up for it by having the comfiest beds in Europe).

Since I’m pretty much a European Airbnb expert at this point, I can tell you wacky hosts what we visitors would LOVE to see:

Just use all-white bedding. We chose you to save some cash but we still want the classy simplicity of a hotel. Good news: white bedding costs the same as that offensive neon colored bedding with the geometric shapes that is all over Europe. Sleeping in a bed is kind of an intimate experience; I really don’t want to think about you and your weird style sleeping here too. There's this store called Ikea. Get yourself there.

Buy new mattresses. Yours are old. They feel like a futon and they make me want to scream. Don't buy them at Ikea.

Use mattress protectors under your sheets. Do I need to break it down for you? If you're marketing your place to families, remember that families have kids and kids have accidents. One of mine peed the bed in Prague, the other threw up in the middle of the night in France. Luckily we caught them both before damage was done, but it could’ve ruined so much mattress. On second thought, you know what? Just embrace the accident and use this opportunity to toss the mattress in the dump. Ok, now go buy a new mattress AND mattress protectors.

Stock TP & paper towels. You'd think this was a given. It is not. Yes, it's true, I will be visiting the grocery store several times on my trip, but this is not something I was hoping to stock up on. Although I did and I left the extras for the next guests. Ya welcome.

Don’t charge extra for sheets and towels. I’m looking at you, France, ya weirdos.

Have normal sized bath towels. A hand towel is not a bath towel. I’m looking at you, Paris, ya weirdos!

Provide hand soap. From a pump, please. Every time I get to an Airbnb, I have a small moment of panic before I get to the bathroom. Will there be handsoap? Will it be an old bar tied to a string? Insert grossed-out-face emojis right here. I can't even. Just get a bottle of pump soap. Cheap is fine. And fill it up for the next person, man! We've come too far to let this keep civilization down.

Get your crap outta there. You're thinking, "Hey, this Airbnb sitch is great! I just get to leave my house as is and charge people to stay there." Nah, man. We don't want to be shoving aside your 234 bathroom products to make room on the miniscule counter for ours. Bathroom clutter, clothes in closets, posters from when your teenage son lived there, too many tchotchkes on shelves, alllll the decorative breakables on end tables. Just pare down. Put it in a closet and chain it shut. I’ve seen it done and yes it was a bike lock chain and it made me feel weird to see it. But it felt less weird than having to face all your junk and try to make sense of it when I'm trying to relax. Not to mention trying to keep my kids from breaking it or misplacing it.

Have it professionally cleaned. We can tell the difference.

Have a working fridge and freezer. This is a big reason I’m choosing you. Yeah, your freezer is the width and depth of my forearm but I have brought my freezer meal from home and I’d like to keep it that way until I eat it.

Provide a visitors guide in a binder that I can flip through. Having it in your online profile does me no good if your WiFi sucks. And your WiFi always sucks.

Try to have WiFi that doesn’t suck. It’s 2018 and it’s a normal part of everyday life now. Some of our best WiFi was in a humble high altitude cabin in Switzerland. You can do it, folks! I know you can. I believe in you and your internet company.

Provide a house manual. We don’t intuitively know that the washing machine requires turning on wall knobs in addition to the machine knobs. And since you have 12 different heaters all over the house, each with different electricity hubs, we don’t get it and we’re cold! Help! We’ve never lived in your house before! Heeeelllppp!

Provide an address or GPS coordinates. You’d think providing an address would be a given. On the Greek island of Mykonos there are no street names soooo...provide GPS coordinates! And when we talk to you on the phone while we're driving around lost, don't keep saying, "You can't miss it." Because we already missed all the "its" and we've never been here before. Thank you for sending your cleaning lady to rescue us. But GPS coordinates would solve the problem pretty well.

Make us food. I know I've been demanding a lot so far, but when you add homemade regional food to the whole experience, I will happily forget everything else that bugged me about your place. My most memorable experiences at Airbnbs had to do with food. Once we stayed in the middle-of-nowhere France and the host provided breakfast and showed us how to get almonds off their trees and then she sent us on our way with slices of her homemade holiday almond nougat. Whoa. Just whoa. Then in Tuscany, our host made a pan of foccacia with sliced tomatoes on top. We gobbled it up faster than you could say marvellissimo! Just kidding. That's not a word. But you know what I mean.

I think that covers most of it! If I think of something else, I'll leave it in your review. But just know...
I will always give you a 5-star rating anyway. Because your place is usually accurately portrayed in the photos and paying less on accomodations usually means NOT having a ritzy hotel experience. Also, I've met you in person and you're so nice and how could I talk about your house like that behind your back? Now, hey, that one Paris place, can you send back our two really nice umbrellas that we left there once? Thanks.

Overall, I gotta give 5 stars to Airbnb for revolutionizing the travel experience. You made all our adventures way more affordable and way more interesting than they would've been 10 years ago. Bravissimo! Now that's a word. 

Switzerland: Luzern & Zurich

Say hello to lovely Luzern! Its main attraction is the Chapel Bridge which seems "meh" in pictures, but was so much prettier and more interesting in real life. 

It's the oldest covered wooden footbridge in the world. It was built in the 1330s and sadly was mostly torched in the 1990s due to an accidental fire (some think it was a rogue cigarette butt), but all rebuilt within a year. Many of the paintings (100 out of 147) in the ceiling trusses were ruined, and 30 were restored and remain there today.

 We walked back and forth on the bridge several times and then wandered to the other bridge down the Ruess River.

For lunch we ate at Pasta Razzi, a really good homemade pasta place. It had a hipster vibe which made it even better. They sold overpriced lemonade that tasted like lemon herb water. Cool, guys. Cool.

 After lunch we spent three hours at Park Vogeligartli. The kids played at the playground while Adam and I rested on the grass, then we alternated playing chess and frisbee.

Adam cooled the kids off by spraying them with fountain water. They were thrilled.

We splurged on our final Airbnb in Europe EVUH. Well, hopefully not evuh, but for now. It was a beauty. Twice the size of our apartment in Lux, open, airy rooms, and gorgeous views of Lake Luzern. It was heavenly to spread out a bit after being confined to a couple very cramped rooms in Beatenberg.

 Plus bullfrogs in a lily pond in the backyard that went completely berzerk every single night. Wow. It made me feel less bad about my loud kids.

 One night I sat on the balcony and watched the most incredible lightning storm. THE. BEST.

Our last day in Switzerland was spend in Zurich. 

It's not one I'd highly recommend for tourists; it's really just people going to work in the world's highest GDP city. But it did have a few darling, narrow cobbled streets we wandered around, and we enjoyed the views and park at Lindenhof Hill.

 We didn't spend too long in this city ... just hung out and ate some random stuff from the grocery store and watched these cute old men play chess in the park.

 Loving these new Bueno ice cream cones! Europe rarely experiements with new food products, so when they branch out it's always exciting.

 This was my favorite picture of the whole day. Seeing my kids skip along cobble stone streets is one of those quintessential European views that gives me a thrill. Next time we come to Europe as a family, my kids will be a lot taller, and maybe not so much into skipping.

 Don't let me forget about cutie little dudes just sitting perched in front of quaint city scapes.  I've loved exploring this amazingly beautiful continent with them.

 Meanwhile, back at the ranch, someone's crap is strewn everywhere.
Oh, wait, that's my crap. And I've taken pictures of every angle of this place cuz I'd like to think someday a giant kitchen and a really open floor plan is in my future. Plus someone to clean up all my crap.
Adam's saying goodbye to the beautiful view.

And that was the end of our European vacation extravaganza. 

Next up: THE MOVE. duhn duhn DUHNNNN.

Switzerland: Interlaken Area

THE HILLS ARE ALIVE. 

We stayed on the mountainside town of Beatenberg. The first night we stayed there we went for a walk around the neighborhood and loved the views. So we took pics of each of us. We are good at posing.

We wanted our Interlaken portion of the trip to be simple outdoors stuff. We hiked, biked, paddle boated, and watched parasailers land. It was lovely. When the kids weren't complaining.

Right up the street from our Airbnb was a hiking trail that went on for miles. We followed it until the kids fell apart.

Interlaken is between Lake Brienz and Lake Thun. Hence the name "interlaken" or "between lakes".  

We went paddle boating on Lake Brienz. Gorgeous views on all sides. The color palette of Switzerland is amazing.

Turquoise water, green vegetation, blue mountains, white snow caps, white clouds, blue skies. Black and white striped shirts.

Treat to keep them going: baby bottle suckers. Weird.

Snack to keep them going: pretzel fishy crackers. They were a huge highlight. Anything crunchy and fish shaped will keep Noah happy for hours.

After the paddle boat ride we watched the parasailers land in a big field in Interlaken. It was mesmerizing. Sienna became obsessed with them and she wanted to do it soooooooo bad. I talked to one of the pilots who had just landed and she said there was no age limit and she'd be happy to take Sienna up. I really wanted to go, too, but there was no way we were letting our 9-year-old go up there. Someday, Sienna and I will parasail together. Just not this time.

Our humble Airbnb. It was an apartment on ground level and it was tight. It felt like camping but I'm so glad it wasn't. It threatened to rain every day we were staying there (4 nights, 5 days) but thankfully it only did at night. 

There was a bike car rack snafu right before the trip and we could only fit three bikes on the car, so Adam brought his and the kids' bikes and we planned to rent one for me if we all wanted to use them together. But the adults just walked with the kids while they biked and it was great. Adam went on a couple big rides by himself. It ended up fine. 

I went on a run every morning down the hillside into Beatenberg town and it was adorable.

One day we took the cable car up the mountainside of the Bernese Alps to two little remote towns, Gimmelwald and Murren. Cute, cute.

Right when you get off the cable car at Gimmelwald, you run right into this playground. The kids stayed here forever and loved every bit of it.

The draw to these two towns is that there are no cars. Except come to find out, there are cars ... just jeep-like vehicles used for yard work and maintenance. But, still, for the most part, it's just people walking around. In Gimmelwald, I talked to one townswoman at the park (she was there with her toddler daughter) and she said there are no stores and schools and the population is 80. She has to go by cable car to Murren or Lauterbrunnen for groceries.

There were a few of these charming little self-handling stores along the way. You take what you want and pay where it says. Cute, cute.

Decorating with cow bells is a thing. I saw it a few places, none more prominent than this display. On closer inspection, they are ginormous and appear to be awards for superior farming and cow raising.

My favorite part of the entire week in Switzerland was these water fountains everywhere. They'd be on your path right when you needed a drink or a refill of your water bottle or a rinse of your hands. The water was cold and fresh - the best I've ever tasted. Free public water is always the hugest treat for an American living in Europe!!

The walk around Gimmelwald took a short time and at the top of the pathway, I had one of the kids take this pic of Adam and me. Well done whoever that was!

After walking around Gimmelwald, we took the cable card ten minutes to Murren. Upon exiting the station, we happened upon this Swiss Army Knives display and Adam and I reminisced about our childhoods when we each had a version of one of these knives all to ourselves. Ahhhh the olden days. I have the best memories with my old red knife. Toothpick, nail file, tweezers ... I don't even think I ever used the knife. It was my little kid version of a hygiene kit I guess. Carrying it around made me feel tough, prepared AND well kempt. 

 

Switzerland is so painfully expensive so we ate in a lot. I prepped some freezer meals beforehand and made simple pasta some other nights. We wanted one splurge meal of fondue, and we had it at Hotel Edleweiss in Murren. It came with no option for meats or vegis ... just bread. It was 50 frances ($50) and wow. We were a little disappointed. The kids' pizza seemed like a better option. 

The apple strudel was yummy! In all the pastries I tried in Switzerland, they had a nut paste that I've never had elsewhere. So whatever that is, it's Swiss. (Can you tell I did not do much research for this trip?)

We watched parasailers up close and personal at this mountaintop restaurant. Incredible.

The restaurant also had a trampoline for kids to jump on while waiting for food. Ah-maz-ing. It left Adam and me to eavesdrop on the many American travelers eating all around us. I learned about these two specific towns from a Rick Steves travel video, and I'm guessing everyone else did, too. Post apple strudel ice cream. Yeah.

More pics with that breathtaking backdrop.

We walked down the most perfectly paved path from Murren to Gimmelwald.

When in Switzerland, getcha some Toblerone. 

And also take this recipe home courtesy of our Airbnb wall hanging. Ya welcome!