The history behind the famous medieval bridge in Avignon, France—still shrouded in mystery, after all these years!—and the song about it that every French child knows.
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Sure, February this year gave us an extra day—but even without the twenty-four hours of leaping, I’d say I made the most of the month.
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A good winter fondue in the Alpine regions of Switzerland and France is a treat savored with friends and family, especially welcome after several hours in the snow.
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Who wouldn’t want a feast of crepes? La Chandeleur in France has a long history and a few fun traditions to go with the piles and piles of sweet crepes on everyone’s plates.
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Voilà: My now absolutely all-time favorite, will-eat-the-entire-batch-in-an-afternoon, go-to homemade chocolate chip cookie.
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Somehow, January ended. Felt long in some ways, sure, but mostly shockingly short. Nonetheless, I got a lot done and made a good start on tackling my 2024 objectives.
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Frankly, we really should apply the principles of healthy eating—what we put into our bodies—to what we put on our bodies.
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The Swiss canton of Valais—specifically the town of Belalp—has a downhill skiing race for which all participants dress as witches (with brooms, even).
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I read a lot of books in 2023, but I managed to winnow down my list of the best-of-the-best using four criteria. Here are my five favorites—and several runners-up.
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How I rounded out the 2023 reading year, with my favorites of the quarter in bold and links to the rest of the year’s lists.
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I spent a portion of the first day of 2024 reviewing my 2023 progress against the goals I’d set for myself—always an interesting reflection point.
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How does Lausanne in Switzerland celebrate New Year’s Eve? Why, it fake-burns its gothic cathedral, of course.
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This site very much has the form of an old-school blog. It’ll stay that way as well. Too much to hope that the good old days of blogging could make a comeback?
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While bad people make mistakes, good people make them, too. Treating good people like bad people in the face of an error harms them (and us).
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Checking progress on my current-year goals at the end of November, even though the year still has one more month to go, always feels like looking into the wayback machine.
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While people and organizations have aimed to reduce life friction as much as possible, we might just want to add back in some of it for our own health and wellbeing.
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SAD or just the season? it seems unreasonable to assume that seasons don’t affect humans when they affect everything else. We live in the atmosphere, after all. Even when we sometimes wish we did not.
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Switzerland doesn’t have a feast of thanksgiving, but it does have the opposite: A day of fasting. Say what? Here’s the full story of the Swiss federal fasting day, including its history and how it’s celebrated.
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