The Johnslingtons

Back in May when we were figuring out the dates and structure of this part of our trip, I bugged my friend Carolyn for a recommendation on where to go between the Austrian Alps and southern France. “Well,” she wrote, “obviously you guys should come visit us in Switzerland.” You may be confused – didn’t… Continue reading Switzerland is a Wonderland

I met my friend Courtney on my very first frisbee team when I moved to San Francisco. It was a fantastic team – we nearly won the league, we *always* won the bar after the game, and I’m still in touch with some of the folks from Layoutnall (team name theme: pharmaceuticals) eighteen years later!… Continue reading Interlude: Small-town Germany

Fiona spent the last week and a half of June in Austria, first in the Stubai Valley, then in the city of Salzburg. Salzburg is a city founded (literally!) on salt—it sits atop an ancient sea, which evaporated and left huge amounts of salt, a substance that was very valuable when they started mining it… Continue reading Where in the World is Fiona? Austria!

Like London, Salzburg is a city I campaigned to visit on this trip, and one that’s rich in memories for me. But unlike London, my Salzburg memories are older, hazier and a bit bittersweet. I’d visited twice before, once with my family during the summer I turned seven, and again on a school trip the… Continue reading Nostalgia and New Memories in Salzburg

As you know, I love me some mountains, and we’ve certainly seen our fair share as we made our way around the world. We’ve been to Faerie. We’ve hiked in tremendous, previously unknown-to-us jagged peaks. We spied the highest point on a continent. But… man, I don’t know if I’ve ever seen mountains as rugged… Continue reading Stunned by Stubai

You know that thing that happens when you feel better after feeling terrible? You have the flu or Covid or food poisoning and your body just completely turns on you and it’s miserable and then, one day, you go back to feeling pretty normal and it’s AWESOME? Like, sun shining, birds singing, ready to take… Continue reading The Hills (and the Johnslingtons) Come Alive in Austria

I’m rolling up Prague, Croatia, and Berlin into one post and calling it “Central Europe,” because we didn’t spend all that much time in any one place (except for Croatia, where we didn’t go anywhere). Homemade apricot tarts from my friend Carolyn’s neighbor at her house in Prague. It’s hard to describe these, because they’re… Continue reading Central Europe – The Best Stuff We Ate

Fiona didn’t have too much to say about her stays in Prague, Czech Republic; Drasnice, Croatia; or Berlin, Germany—not because they aren’t wonderful places to visit, but because she was pretty sick for much of her time there. But she still managed to have some fun and make a few distinctly Fiona-y observations, so here… Continue reading Where in the World is Fiona? Central Europe!

Berlin is cool. Really cool. Melbourne-class cool. It’s a unique place, where the legacy of the divided city still informs the way things look and feel today. In recent years its coolness-to-price ratio has drawn young people from all over the world, resulting in perhaps the most culturally diverse city we’d been to on this… Continue reading Boppin’ Around Berlin

We were having dinner on our last night in Croatia when I got an email from the serviced apartment we had reserved for the next three days in Berlin – our reservation was cancelled. We were in a whole other country at 7pm with a feverish child, a flight to Germany the next afternoon, and… Continue reading We Had Trouble Getting To Berlin, Germany