Hello Again!

I'm back. I think?

Bonjour! You may (or may not) have noticed that I haven’t published anything in a while. What started as a week off because of travel became an almost two month break. While it wasn’t planned initially, it became intentional.

What happened? Nothing exciting or drastic. We’re all happy and healthy over here. But a few things happened in a row that led to me to extend my break week by week by week until all of a sudden it was a completely new year.

First, we went back to the states for Thanksgiving. I spent the week soaking up time with my family, and I just didn’t feel like carving time out to write. Instead, I went to story hour at the library with my dad and my daughter. Cooked and ate Thanksgiving with aunts and uncles and cousins. Saw the new home of Annapolis Crystals. Spent an afternoon with my amazing sister-in-law, brother-in-law, and two nieces.

The next week, jet lag hit. We flew back on December 1, and I jumped back into 8 hours a week of French classes while managing my own jet lag and that of our 2 year old. Again, I just didn’t feel like writing. The week after that, I started a new job (woohoo!). Writing didn’t even cross my mind that week, between balancing French classes, learning a new industry, and normal life.

And around that same time, I listened to a podcast called Beth’s Dead. Fascinating story of two podcasters who shut down their show after a fan interaction went very wrong. I have no delusions that a ton people read this, and I know most of you personally, but when you’re in a writing rut AND you’re consuming content about strangers on the internet going too far…well, you start to question why you’d be on the internet at all.

So that’s what led to this unplanned break to finish up 2025 and start 2026. I took the time to think about if I want to keep this up, and I think I do. Going forward, I think I’ll publish ad-hoc rather than sticking to my self-imposed schedule of publishing (almost) every Friday, but you can consider me back.

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In the time I spent not writing, we took a trip to Switzerland. We were there for less than 48 hours, but Zurich was absolutely charming.

The Christmas decorations were on point, with lights strung between the buildings of almost every street. The streets were Disney-clean, which made even more sense when I saw how they deal with garbage. They have normal bins on the street, but underneath there’s a massive trash container that gets emptied by trash trucks with cranes attached.

I highly recommend the Widder Hotel. Beautifully designed, centrally located, with great food and drinks options. It’s just around the corner from Lindenhof, a park/courtyard/river overlook that gives you a view of the city over the water. We also went to the self-proclaimed world’s first vegetarian restaurant Haus Hiltl. It’s big and kid-friendly, which was perfect for us as we had 3 kids and 4 adults.

Speaking of kid-friendly, our friends who met us in Zurich stayed at a “family-first” mountain resort for Christmas, Maerchen Hotel. It sounded like a dreamworld for kids — a slide down into the lobby, kids-only dinner (which means parents-only dinner, too), waterpark, and full-day kids camp.

Despite being super short, the trip felt like a nice break from the winter monotony that tends to happen in the northern hemisphere. It was also extra special because Bowie got to join us — her first train journey in Europe. The visit took her to her fifth country, which is about 5x higher than most Americans.

Here’s to more train travel in 2026, and slightly more sporadic but hopefully still fun Crumbs from Abroad.

Views from Lindenhof, Swiss Bowie, and the secret to clean streets