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Five years in Basel

Today marks 5 years since we moved to Basel. FIVE!! We did that. 🥂

It’s a helluva lift to pick up your 4-year-old and move across an ocean to a country where you definitely don’t speak the language and you definitely don’t know what the hell you’re doing.

Driving to France or Germany weekly for groceries? Finding a pediatrician auf Deutsch? Navigating European shoe and clothing sizes? Living without air conditioning or smoke detectors? Finding a studio where I can teach yoga in English? Decoding appliance settings in Italian, French, and German?

Done. ✔️ Not easy at first, but done.

When we took this photo, it was literally the first time we’d been across the Rhine. After about two months, my heart no longer raced every time I had to pay the gas station cashier auf Deutsch. Five years later, my kid has a stellar native accent and our German is considerably less sh*tty. And I am proud to have learned a (hard) new language in my 40s.

Google Translate and GPS have definitely saved our lives countless times. (I can’t imagine living overseas without either.) More importantly, so has our amazing community. The relationships we’ve made here have become forever-friendships beyond what we ever could have hoped for. Truly the best part of this whole experience.

Thanks to everyone near and far who’s been a part of our Swiss adventure thus far. When we first moved here, we thought it might feasibly last only six months. Super proud to now have five years (and a lot more cheese and chocolate) under our belts. 🧀🍫🏔🇨🇭🫕

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Ruhezeit

In Switzerland, you can’t vacuum on a Sunday. You can’t mow your lawn or wash your car. (Unless you want to risk a hefty fine, or a cranky neighbor.)

The grocery stores are all closed, so you’d better stock up on Saturday, because you won’t be picking up any last-minute burger buns or an extra six-pack for your barbecue.

It’s Ruhezeit.

That’s German for rest period. Off-season. Quiet time.

The same rules apply from 10pm-6am. (Don’t shower or flush your toilet overnight.)

And from 12-1pm on weekdays. Craftspeople stop working. Children nap. Shops close. Put your brass instruments away and chill out for an hour over lunch.

We are loud Americans, and so of course we often forget this. Especially when we first moved here. We felt so. damn. loud.

After nearly five years, though, Ruhezeit feels pretty damn good. It’s like a collective cultural savasana.

On Sundays, instead of shopping or working, Swiss folks go hiking — in stark contrast to Americans’ Costco runs. They ramble along village streets for family walks, toddlers wheeling by on balance bikes. They sit on their terraces and watch the neighbors stroll past.

Something about this all feels so healthy, and balanced, and SANE. Simple. Conscious. (Especially the part about not shopping.) Being together, in their bodies, out in nature.

This Sabbath practice originated in Jewish and Christian traditions, but it continues, even as Swiss culture grows ever more agnostic.

There’s a lot of buzz lately about the idea that in white supremacist capitalist culture, rest is resistance. This is so true. (Thanks, @thenapministry.)

Ruhezeit reminds me that, quite simply, rest is also just HUMAN. And I’m grateful for this enforced weekly quiet, even as we still sometimes blow it using the blender for smoothies at 7am or hollering too loudly over a FIFA23 victory goal.

Find your off-season. Your Ruhezeit.

Take your savasana. Whatever that looks like. 🪷

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There’s a better way

As an American living abroad, I am rarely patriotic — more often ashamed — and GUNS are one of the main reasons why. 😔

They’re also why we were so eager to leave.

Back in 2018, with my son approaching kindergarten age, the local Massachusetts school district he was due to attend went viral for teaching their kindergarteners to hide from active shooters to the tune of “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.”

WTF. 🤬😤 (She says in the most yogic of righteously-angry ways.)

I don’t know what it will take to get the GOP out of the NRA’s pocket. I don’t understand how politicians can just turn away from children being slaughtered in schools.

I do know there’s a better way — a life without the fear of gun violence. We’re living it here. And while there are plenty of things about Switzerland, and Europe, that are far from perfect, I’ll take it if it means we don’t have to worry that our beloved babe will be shot in school.

Bless every soul lost to American gun violence. May they be free from suffering. May they know peace. 💔

Artist: @nikkolas_smith

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A slushy New Year to you

Back home in Basel after a week in the Alps. 

See those drab brown slopes behind me? Friends: climate change is REAL. 😔 

Europe’s been experiencing a massive January heatwave and the mountains are scarily brown, green, and bleak — no snow to be found in so many Alpine villages throughout France, Switzerland, and Italy.

Ski slopes are closed, gondolas shut down, and wildlife that doesn’t usually turn up until March is already wandering around. Hotels are renting out mountain bikes instead of skis. Unless you’re at super high altitude, it’s all just mud, slush, and melting ice.

But it’s not just the lack of snow. I wonder how these tiny family-run ski hotels and restaurants will survive in the years to come. Will a warming climate push them out? There’s a whole Alpine economy here that could just, welp, disappear. 🥺

On a lighter note: Happy New Year. I know we’re seven days in and you may have already chucked your resolutions. That’s ok.

It doesn’t really matter. You can always begin again.

Atha yoga anusasanam. The first Sutra. Sanskrit for “Now is the time for the yoga to begin.”

So yes, for sure, I’ll encourage you to unroll your mat and move your body a little more this week, this month, this year. Every bit helps. 🧘🏽‍♀️🤸🏿‍♂️

But also: floss your teeth. It’s a game changer. 🦷

And try oil pulling. Another regular Ayurvedic practice that works wonders. I’ve doubled down on it in this tough season of “let’s pretend the pandemic is over” mixed with schools full of flu and RSV and strep throat and anything else you can throw at kids.

Phew, 2023. Here we are. Somehow.

Take good care of yourselves. Go walk around a melting lake and feel the sun on your face and the wind in your hair.

It’s all connected. 🌲🦌

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Walk. Just walk.

There are a million fitness bros on the internet trying to sell you on bone broth and intermittent fasting and the evils of seed oils. F*&k that. 🙄

Just take a walk. Every day.

Start there. 🚶🏽‍♀️🌳🚶🏿

I’ve got a thing lately for urban design — in particular, the power of walkable communities. Living in Europe has stoked this fire. 🔥

One of the fascinating tidbits I’ve learned is that Americans often

1) Romanticize their college life — because it was the one time they lived in an actual walkable community with everything they needed and their best friends within a few minutes’ stroll, and

2) Yearn for the magic and charm of the vacations they experienced in walkable European cities like Paris or Barcelona or Prague or even, gulp, Disney World. Do you know what made them feel so magical? The mixed-use zoning that allows for cafes, apartments, and businesses to occupy the same block.

Did you feel it trick-or-treating last night? 🎃👻🍬 How great it felt to walk around your neighborhood and see people out and about and breathe the crisp autumn air and crunch leaves on the sidewalk alongside your littles and be in your body instead of strapped into an isolated metal bubble on wheels?

There’s wonder and wellness and connectivity in walking. Not to mention the power to save the planet. 🌎

It’s simple and accessible and you can do it with people you love. Or listen to a podcast and feed your brain and your spirit while you’re at it.

Our bodies are designed for this. Trust them.

You don’t have to pay for some expensive gym.

Being well — being every day embodied, out in the world, sharing space and breath and nature — doesn’t have to cost a dime.

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Chilly cobblestone moments

This morning my little family rolled out of bed and pulled on clothes we’d actually ironed and I applied once-a-year makeup and wore a real bra and not leggings (!!) to meet up with the always-wonderful Suzy Lou Photography for our annual family photos. 

(This is a quick behind-the-scenes shot from last year’s in the Alt Stadt.)

We met Suzy the first fall we’d moved here, back in 2018, when we’d only lived in Basel a few months and we weren’t sure how long we’d actually get to stay. The cityscape along the Rhine was the main character that year, and ever since, we’ve discovered different urban corners to create a visual history as our little guy grows (and as my husband and I both go grey).

It’s a pain in the ass to actually get properly dressed and put on lipstick and we’re often swearing at each other under our breath between snaps, but I’m so, so glad we’ve done this all these years. 

Expat life offers no illusion of permanence; everything about our Swiss reality could change in a heartbeat, depending on the job that allows us to stay. The rug can be pulled out from underneath it all at any moment. 

So I’m ever grateful to have taken the time for these chilly cobblestone shots over the years.

Thanks to Suzy for bringing Basel to life.