A family again

And we’re a complete family unit again!

While having time and space to get our apartment ready, find grocery stores and get established at work was really helpful it was also incredibly lonely. I missed these faces so much

And getting to watch them explore...

And getting to snuggle

And even a little bit of this attitude

I know Olivia it was a long time to be apart but I’m so happy to see you I’ll let you stand on whatever table you want ... this week! And after that it will be time to go find new places to explore that we can continue to share with all our friends!

A girls trip across the ocean

While Adam had to start his new role in Liechtenstein on April 1st (therefore flying overseas on March 28th) my last deadline for work wasn’t until March 29th and I knew that it wasn’t going to be possible for us to have the house sold & packed and all our goodbyes said and everything else done that goes with an international move in time for us all to relocate together. So, we made the tough decision that Adam would go and then the girls & I would follow in wave two a few weeks later. Let’s just say that I’m pretty sure Adam got the quieter end of the deal.

We also realized how difficult it would be for me to fly internationally with two tiny humans so we asked / persuaded / coerced (you pick the verb) my mother to fly with us and spend a few days helping us get settled in. Thankfully the tiny humans are cute and she said yes.

Mom was booked to fly from Austin to Dallas then join us on the Dallas to Philadelphia and Philadelphia to Zurich flights. Until she was notified the evening before we were to go that her flight from Austin was delayed which meant she would have missed all the connections. Thankfully she saw the notice and spent many hours on the phone with American Airlines service counter to get rebooked. All of which meant she got about 3 hours of sleep that evening.

The girls and I were staying at Adam’s parents house after selling ours and having all our earthly possessions (minus three suitcases and five carryons) packed up to either go to long term storage or eventually float it’s way to Liechtenstein. {Aside: do you know how long it takes a boat to dock in Liechtenstein??} I had spoken with American Airlines earlier in the week and explained that I was traveling alone with two small children and asked if my Mother-in-law could come through security with me to help me get to the gate. Not a problem they replied, just ask for a day pass when you check in and as long as she has valid ID, she can come through. So off we went to the airport. We checked in, they viewed everyone’s passports, they took our bags. I asked for a day pass for my Mother-in-law who was going to help me with the children through security. The worker told me they do not issue day passes except for ADA reasons. I told them of the conversations I’d already had over the phone, they called a manager over, they still decided they couldn’t issue a pass. My Father-in-law talked to the AA concierge since he’s a Platinum member, still no. We were less than impressed. So now I was faced with taking two kids, a diaper bag, two rolling suitcases, a stroller, a carseat & a backpack through security by myself. “Oh, and by the way, the TSA precheck lanes are closed so you have to take off your shoes for you and the 4 year old, but the one year old can leave hers on.” I stared at the guy then looked at Olivia who had just taken off her shoes. It’s funny now that I’m here & writing about it. For the record, it was not in the moment.

We waited it out for a few minutes to try to find a bit of a lull in security but there didn’t seem to be any slowing of people trying to go through so we said our goodbyes to the Powells and headed in. We made it through. I feel for the TSA folks, they tried their best to help us and meet all the restrictions but we were loud, disorganized and had way too much stuff to coral. Thankfully just outside the entrance stood my Mom who was about as nervous about the entire situation as I was. She sprang into action and got the kids something to eat and all around a table so I could walk down the terminal and walk off a little of my frustration.

McDonald's to the rescue!

We found our gate and had a few minutes to kill so Charlotte & I went to ride the SkyLink while Mom & Olivia watched the luggage.

The plane arrived and the passengers started to get off then Mom & I spotted a paramedic crew standing at the gate with a stretcher. We then noticed them starting to glove up like they were going to go into action. This is when I got nervous again – though to be fair, I’m not convinced I had stopped being nervous all day. We waited what felt like an eternity for all the passengers to deplane then watched the paramedics go down the jetway at about the time boarding for our flight was supposed to commence. Awhile later, the paramedics reappeared helping a flight attendant off of the plane who was holding bandages to her head. We will never know if there was an altercation in flight (I assume no, because nobody that we saw left in handcuffs) or if just something fell in landing or deplaning. Mom & I pushed forward and took advantage of family boarding so we could get everyone in their seats. I took Olivia’s car seat and strapped it into her plane seat in the thought that she would then feel at home and go to sleep on the flight.

She did not.

She kicked and screamed the entire 3hrs and 17min flight to Philadelphia.

All boarded & hoping for sleep...that didn't happen

LeapFrog DVDs for the win!

We were supposed to have about a 90 min layover in Philly which I thought was just about perfect to stretch legs and move to the other gate and get back on the big silver tube for the long flight. Except that we were delayed because of the medical situation then apparently we didn’t have landing clearance because we circled for awhile. By the time we got to the gate we had 25 minutes until boarding of our next flight. Eeek.

While waiting in the plane for everyone else to get off because, oh did I mention we were at the THE. VERY. BACK. we made some friends one of whom said, “how can I make your life easier?” Those words will never leave my mind. What kindness. No assumptions of what I might need, but a genuine offer to help in a tangible way. I asked if he could carry Olivia’s car seat off of the plane so I could just carry her and the diaper bag. We finally got off the plane, the stroller was thankfully waiting for us at the end of the jetway, the kind gentleman placed the carseat on top of the stroller for me then we took off. I pushed the stroller with a full carseat on top, had the diaper bag across me, Olivia on my hip. Charlotte had her backpack full of plane toys and stuffed animals. Mom had the two rolling suitcases and her backpack and purse. We looked like the opening credits to the Beverly Hillbillies. But oh, this is fine, we’re at gate A13 and our next flight is at A24, those have to be fairly close.

Wrong again.

A13 and A24 are about as far away from each other as they can be 😠

We ran / jogged / powerwalked our way across half of Philadelphia. There is only one flight to Zurich a day and I was going to be on it. I figured if I could make it with the stroller, I could stall long enough for Mom & Charlotte to catch up. And thankfully that is just about what happened. I showed up as they were calling Group 7. By the time the gate checked the stroller and reviewed all my passports and covid documentation, Mom was in line just behind me. Somehow we switched and she got ahead of me by the time we were actually getting on the plane – I imagine I was dealing with a child or a stroller or something but to be honest a few memories are a bit fuzzy in this whirlwind. Anyway, the plane was a 787 so it was 3 sets of 3 seats across. The girls and I were in middle and Mom was in the same row in the aisle of the next section. As we started to settle in, flight attendant came up to me and said that we were not allowed to sit in the middle section with a carseat since it’s too difficult to get around incase of emergency, so we would need to relocate to a side section to put the carseat at a window. She also said that the plane was nearly empty so she was going to move us up a section to the Main Plus so we wouldn’t be as crowded. In another act of extraordinary kindness, she also let us sit 2 & 2 behind each other so that Charlotte could also have a window and we had a little more room to spread out. We had dinner on the plane. Either my taste was still messed up from all the nerves and trauma of the day or airline food has gotten even worse, but I picked at some bread; Olivia at the crackers and Charlotte balked at everything and had applesauce packs I’d stashed in the diaper bag.

I think Olivia passed out as they dimmed the cabin lights – poor kid didn’t get a nap & had been through a lot so she was exhausted. Charlotte took a bit longer but was soon sprawled across her seat, the spare seat & most of my Mom’s seat. I’m never going to understand how my Mother managed to stay awake again, but her adrenaline had kicked in and despite only having three hours of sleep the night before, she was awake most of the flight…perhaps it was also the 4 year old kicking her…

We landed and I told Mom we were taking our time getting off the plane, I was no longer rushed to get anywhere and we could get ourselves a bit organized before sprinting around. So we did. We cleared immigration and customs and rounded the corner to the best sight we’d had in three weeks. We were back together as a family!

My Weekend trip to Züri

It’s my third weekend in Europe and last before the rest of the clan arrives. It’s also one of several four day weekends that are spread throughout the year and a very nice benefit to working with Hilti in Liechtenstein! So with a few weeks to go before chaos arrives, I decided it would be a great opportunity to do some advanced scouting of our closest major metro area, Zurich!

To be honest this particular four day weekend snuck up on me and I was wholly unprepared to travel as of Thursday morning so I did a frantic internet search for a hotel to stay at for a couple nights, researched a few touristy things to do that were within walking distance of the hotel and did some light packing in preparation for an early morning drive to the “Z” (bear with me, I’m going to try out some nicknames for a bit). Now normally I’m excellent at road trips. It’s a long standing tradition within my family going back generations but one of the things I quickly learned when travelling alone is how much I rely on Amanda for the detailed planning aspects of our trips. As I’m sure we’ve mentioned before Amanda is not just a normal type A personality. She’s an alpha type A + with seemingly endless energy to plan and research every aspect of our daily lives, and she takes that energy level up another step when planning vacations. I, on the other hand, like having a plan on hand and am more than happy to contribute my opinions on our travel itinerary but seldom do the hard graft required to make everything come together. So when I went to bed on Thursday night I was already mentally exhausted from the very minimal planning I had done throughout the day.

Enter Friday morning. I woke up early, got a jog in, cleaned up, checked for all the relevant documentation I would need for the few days away, loaded the car and pulled out of the garage. And not 5 minutes down the road the car notifies me that it would like breakfast prior to heading into “Z town”. At this stage I had avoided buying fuel since my arrival and I was a little tenuous about it because my rental was Diesel and as far as I recall they don’t call it Diesel in Europe, and I don’t have any way to look up what it is called because I don’t have internet access without WiFi. But either way I had to get gas so I stopped at the first place on the motorway and much to my relief they actually listed Diesel on the pump! So I filled up, picked up a road snack and drink because I hadn’t thought to plan food for the journey and started down the road again.

Now some of you may have picked up on the lack of internet comment and instantly wondered how I was going to navigate to and through a foreign city without a navigation system, I know who you are! Some of you may have instantly given me the benefit of the doubt and thought “oh he’ll at least have a map to help him find his way” and to you I would say that is far more credit than I deserve! But I would venture to bet no-one who knows me and is reading this would even think to imagine that I took the time to memorize my route and take it on faith that I would be able to traverse a major European city without navigational aid on the first attempt and hope to end up anywhere near my destination. But low and behold, 1hr and 22 min later I was pulling into the parking garage of my hotel. For me this was nothing short of a personal triumph and perhaps something of a minor miracle for which I am indelibly grateful!

But on to the real reason I made the trip. I started my scouting trip with a walk over to the Swiss National Museum where the confluence of the Limmat and Shil River occurs just north of the Zurichsee. This is also the northern extent of the “old town” and proved to be a very nice area to get some decent pictures.

I walked along the Limmat back towards the Zurichsee passing back and forth across several bridges that span the river to find various picturesque locations. Once I reached the Zurichsee I stopped for a Bratwurst at one of the street vendors and then continued down the southern shore to a few parks before beginning my search for the FIFA museum. This is where my lack of navigational tools had the most significant impact. The FIFA museum is supposedly just 2-3 city blocks east of the Zurichsee as the crow flies but then I’m not a crow and had to deal with the marginally winding roads that make up the older areas of the city. After wandering up and down various streets for more than an hour I finally gave in and started to walk back to the hotel in the knowledge that we would be back in Zurich many
times and eventually I would find it. I also had a movie to catch that night in one of the local cinema’s that played English versions of current Hollywood hits and I still hadn’t decided where to have dinner.

After a brisk 3 mile walk back to the hotel to clean-up and change for the evening I decided that the timing was too tight for dinner and the movie so I decided to go heavy on the movie snacks instead. “Death on the Nile” was my subject for the evening and the blue Cinema Capital was a decent, if small theatre to get my silver screen fix in.

The next day I walked back to the Swiss National Museum and spent almost the entire day wandering this thoroughly modern museum inserted into the site designed by Gustav Gull in the 1890’s. The building itself has the feel of a much older castle or monastery that would have fit on the peninsula a few hundred years earlier but was purpose built in 1898 to house various collections from Switzerland's history. Within the main building the exhibits are presented in a way intended “…to bring artefacts to life in their presumed original surroundings and infuse the historical experience with an intense, enchanting atmosphere” (National Museum around 1900). The Gull definitely hit his mark with overall site design and the curators have done a fantastic job to make this entire site feel anything but purpose built to be a national museum. I’m really looking forward to coming back and sharing it with friends and family in the future!

I finished my last solo day in Zurich dining at a local BBQ restaurant called Brisket that promised “Texas style brought home” and it did not disappoint. It was so good in fact that I did a little research on the ownership (Von Matt Hospitality Group) and discovered that they used some of my favorite barbeque locations from back in Texas as their inspiration for taking Texas BBQ to Switzerland. I also discovered that they are the same ownership group responsible for La Brea SoCal Tacos and this gem of a sign that I couldn’t agree more with!

After dinner I had one more movie to catch on the weekend because new releases in English are really difficult to find within an hour radius of our apartment and taking 4-5 hours out of any given day to “catch” a movie once the wife and kids arrive will be extremely difficult. So back to blue Cinema for “Fantastic Beasts: the Secrets of Dumbledore,” but this time the theatre was at the Abaton location which was much larger and only half a kilometer from the hotel.

All told my trip to Zurich was a fantastic time and I can’t wait to get back with Amanda and the kids in the coming weeks!

The View from our Apartment

Several weeks into my time in Liechtenstein and I can’t get over the views! You’ve likely seen several of them as you’ve followed along but I wanted to share some of my favorites from the first few weeks here.

A visitor!

I’ve made it through the first week with some success and since I {kind of} know where things are, it’s time to welcome my first visitor! It just so happened that a few days after I departed for Liechtenstein, my father had a business trip scheduled to Italy!

One of the benefits to having a permanent place already established before entering the country is that you can start entertaining as soon as you get furniture in place. And on that front Hilti provides rental furniture until your actual furniture arrives as part of the relocation package.

Dad arrived in Liechtenstein the following Friday for a quick weekend visit to see where we would be staying and do some of his own scouting for their vacation here later in the year. Friday night was pretty standard, dinner out followed by a walk out to the local municipal sports park and spent the rest of the evening enjoying the view from the house as we caught up on all things family related.

One of the fascinating features about the Mauren/Eschen sports park is that it was visited by Saint Pope John Paul II in 1985 and still maintains the stone altar where he stopped and said Mass for the residents and visitors to the area.

We started Saturday off by taking a walk out to the village of Mauren to enjoy the bright sunny mourning and see one of the local churches. The church is very picturesque and with the Liechtenstein mountains in the background and surrounded by the local cemetery for the faithful. One could think of worse places to allow their physical remains to linger for the rest of eternity.

We returned to the apartment shortly before lunch and decided to make our way out to Vaduz so we could see the “southern” half of the country during the afternoon. On our way we made a slight detour to see the Prince’s official residence which is perched at the top of a cliff face several hundred feet above the capital city and offers commanding views of the entire valley below. While not allowed to go inside the castle visitors are able to utilize a free parking area just up the mountain from the castle as well as access several of the mountain trails that run between the small villages that are dotted across the slope.

Vaduz is the capital city and is quite small by almost any standard. You can walk from one end of the main street to the other in under 10 minutes. But like many central European cities the main thorough fair is for pedestrian use only and it makes for a very comfortable stroll from the shops and cafes at the north end to the parliament and Cathedral at the southern end.

On Sunday we decided to take a look at Feldkirch. The largest town in the area, it sits nestled in a valley straddling the Ill tributary before it joins with Rhine on the journey north. While many of the original medieval buildings are no longer around the town center maintains much of the footprint that existed back to Napoleonic times when the Rheintal Valley functioned as a gateway into the heart of the Alps from the north making it a strategic garrison and defensive location. While nothing like a bustling metropolis, there are a good number of cafes and shops that line the cobbled streets and comfortable walking paths that flank either side of the Ill tributary. And they have amazing pizza!

There’s also a local baseball team! That’s right, Feldkirch is home to the Feldkirch Cardinals and belongs to the Austrian Baseball Federation. The ABF is the governing body for Professional Baseball and Softball in Austria and also organizes the national teams it sends to international competition around the world. I had no idea this was even a thing prior to a coworker telling me about it earlier in the week so when I told Dad we should go check it out I really didn’t know what to expect. Low and behold, as we drove up to the park that functions as their home stadium they were warming up for what appeared to be a preseason scrimmage so Dad and I got out and wandered up to the stands. Attendance was free, they had food cooking on the grill and most of the fans were family members who had come to show support for their team on a brisk April afternoon. It was perhaps the most surreal environment I have ever witnessed as a baseball diamond. The temperature was in the upper 30’s to low 40’s but the sun was shining and the setting with mountains in the background was stunning. And then all of the sudden, about 2 innings into the scrimmage it started sleeting! The sun was still shining, the game was still going and there we were watching in the sleet. The winter weather only lasted for half an inning or so and we continued watching for a little longer before we had to head out but nonetheless it was an exciting find!

By the end of the day on Sunday we had seen quite a bit of my new home and I think I may have worn dad out a little.

We had a great time and I can't wait for his return trip with Mom this fall!

Rundgang

My first week in country has been a whirlwind to say the least but I have managed to go on a few brief “walkabouts” to familiarize myself with the surrounding area and today’s post in honor of the views we’ll get to enjoy over the next few years.

This is the view from our balcony:

With a little dusting of snow!

Not bad for a bachelor's dinner

These are a few of the views from the trails around the apartment:

Here is the local park:

Our fellow inhabitants:

This is literally a two minute walk from my office - I haven't gone off in the wilderness to find farmland!

This is the view from my desk. I keep looking for mutton on the cafeteria lunch menu...

On my way out of the parking lot at work

Up on the mountain:

Overlooking the Rhein River:

The Liechtenstein Alps:

The well earned meal

And dessert!

This has to be the largest strawberry I've ever seen!