FAQ

Frequently Asked Questions

What the heck is going on here?

This is Mike and Hannah's travel blog. Here, we recount our adventures as Americans living abroad in Switzerland. Updates to this blog will occur as noteworthy (for us, anyway) things happen and as time allows.

Who are you, again?

Mike and Hannah are married yuppies from Albany, California. Mike works as a strategy consultant to companies making healthcare products and Hannah is a food and beverage publicist. We are affable folk who make great cocktail party guests.

When did all this happen?

In December 2019, Mike and Hannah left their home in Albany, California to live abroad in Zurich, Switzerland. We are scheduled to stay here for about a year.

What exactly makes you a good fit for Switzerland?

We're rather neat for Americans, but probably insufficiently so for the Swiss. We know a handful of German phrases; we're particularly good at, "Sprechen Sie Englisch?" We like chocolate, especially Mike.

My God. Who in the world thought this was a good idea?

Mike's employer asked if he would be willing to take a position working in their Zug, Switzerland (outside of Zurich) office. We jumped at the opportunity.

We're Back!

Paris, France - We've returned to Europe for a three-week sojourn in France, Switzerland, and the UK. We're obviously very excited. We arrived in Paris Sunday around 11AM. Our approach to jet lag is akin to tearing the bandaid off quickly: We purposely sleep little if at all on our transatlantic flight (below is a photo of Hannah, trying not to sleep on the flight), consume copious amounts of caffeine after we land, slowly descend into irritability and mild delirium, and then collapse after staying up as late as we can on our first night in Europe. Our body's, overcome by shock from this maltreatment, eagerly accept a full night's sleep, even if it's offered at an hour that's entirely out of keeping with our normal schedule. Works like a charm. After depositing our things at the hotel, we aimlessly wandered around Paris for a few hours before meeting up with Maggie, an acquaintance of Hannah's from work. Maggie took us to the wine bar Delicatessen where we ...

Fording the Fjords

We stayed one night in Ålesund and for a few days in Øye. These cities are fun for me at least partly because they use letters unique to the Danish-Norwegian alphabet, the 'a' with the circle on top and 'o' with the line through it (official letter names pending further review). Ålesund is a port town of about 70,000 on the western side of Norway on the Atlantic coast. We landed there around 1100PM, but it looked more like 700 or 800pm, owing to the latitude (about 62 degrees north). Throughout our stay here, I've been very excited about the (nearly) never-ending daylight. The sun sets at about 1130PM rises about four hours later, but the hours between are marked more by a duskiness rather than a true darkness. We only stayed in Ålesund overnight (if you want to call it "night") before departing the next morning for Øye, which lies at the tip of a remote Fjord, the Norangsfjorden. Some locals told us that another nearby town, Urke, had less than...

Edinburgh

We stayed in Edinburgh for two days to conclude our Scotland adventure. Hannah spent a semester in Edinburgh in her spritely college days and she remembers it fondly. As we wandered through the city, Hannah would point out various places and reminisce. Here was the restaurant where she would gather with friends to celebrate special occasions (The Outsider), here was the local café they frequented between classes (Peter's Yard), this was the park she walked through to get home (The Meadows), and there is the shitty hostel she stayed in when she arrived (less interesting!). Edinburgh was fun. We liked it more than Glasgow. Edinburgh had more to see (more ancient castles, museums and monuments) and the city was denser and more lively. Glasgow just felt more utilitarian. Hannah - of course - led me to the far-flung corners of the city in an effort to find the newest and best food, including marching me straight out of Edinburgh and into the neighboring city of Leith. We ate well...

The Neutral Zone

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