Experiences – Life – Inspiration 🇨🇭🇯🇵

Turkey is not a Swiss Christmas tradition. It is not really a Dutch one either. Yet somehow a Christmas turkey has found its way into our plans this year. It reminds me that traditions are not always passed down. Sometimes they appear quietly in our lives because of where we…

Yesterday later afternoon my mother and I headed out to visit the Royal Christmas Market in the Hague. It was horribly rainy weather, but when you have lived long enough in the Netherlands like us, you go out anyway come hurricanes, thunderstorms and floods and preferably on the bike too.…

I am still in the Netherlands as I write this, and yesterday my wife sent me a message from our home in Gifu. She told me that my sister in law had stopped by with a small gift. A bag filled with Swiss pretzels and other bakes from a Swiss…

Just yesterday my mother cooked us dinner and chose to make something I hadn’t eaten in a very long time. Sauerkraut with Speck, sausage, and potatoes. In Basel we simply called it Suurkrut und Späck, a name that already carries the feeling of cold evenings and warm kitchens. It was…

I am doing it again. I am shamelessly promoting my sister’s Thai restaurant in Amsterdam and I feel absolutely no guilt about it. When your family runs a place that survived six years in one of the toughest industries in the world you promote it. When that same restaurant kept…

Yesterday I was doing something very ordinary. I was walking through Hanos with my mother while she did her groceries. My self appointed job on these trips is to wander around, read labels and quietly hunt for curiosities on the shelves. Most of the time I see the usual suspects.…

Yesterday I was eating at a Yemeni restaurant in Scheveningen with a good friend of mine from Iraq. I had never eaten Yemeni food before, so I let him take the lead. Whenever we hang out in the Netherlands, we usually end up in a Middle Eastern restaurant anyway. He…

I did not expect a gasoline price sign to hit me with a wave of memories. Yesterday I stopped at a gas station in my old neighbourhood in Rijswijk while using my mother’s car during my visit. It was meant to be a quick and ordinary stop. I looked up…

I used to think cheese was universal. Like air. Or gravity. Something that would always be there. When I moved from Switzerland to the Netherlands in the 90s I never had to miss it. Cheese surrounded me everywhere I went. I took it so completely for granted that I never…