House Hunting Trip

So we're officially in "Transition". A benefit we received with this assignment that we didn’t get with our UK secondment: the option to go on a house hunting trip before we moved.

For several months we thought we might end up in either Switzerland or Austria as visa restrictions are much more lenient in those countries than in Liechtenstein. From the way it has been explained to me there are a limited number of Swiss or Austrian visas available to Hilti on a yearly basis and the company typically prefers to use those for employees who will be taking longer term assignments at headquarters. And since my assignment is specifically for 3 years it turns out that it is easier for Hilti to support us via a residence permit for the Principality of Liechtenstein. Which is great. It means I’m guaranteed to have one of the shortest commutes I’ve ever had. But it also comes with a small restriction, Amanda can only work in Liechtenstein. We debated this point for awhile but ultimately decided to take the leap of faith that Amanda would find an amazing job in the Principality or she could start a Real Housewives of FL (that’s Liechtenstein’s abbreviation in case you wonder) spinoff and we’d see what happened. More on that point to come, but spoiler alert, we won’t have the folks of Bravo following us around with cameras.

Back to house hunting.

From a housing perspective it’s probably beneficial to know a few basic facts about the area:

• The entire Principality is 62 sq miles. To put this in perspective, Dallas County is 909 sq miles; the City of Dallas is 386.
• There are just over 38,000 residents in the Principality. This is 3,000 fewer inhabitants than my childhood hometown of Coppell, Texas which is a quarter of the size of Liechtenstein.
• It’s in Central Europe bordered by Switzerland to the South, West and North and Austria to the East. It’s one of two double landlocked countries in the World.
• Hilti is the largest employer in Liechtenstein and accounts for >32% of Liechtenstein’s sales revenue.

More background on visas. We had planned to let Amanda finish out her last busy season then she & I could fly over at the end of March, find a house; she would fly back to Texas, finish up the whole moving thing, then when they were ready, she & the girls would fly back to start the adventure. Sounds like a great plan, right?

Um. No.

In order to get said visa, you have to have a lease for the duration of your visa being issued. Which means we had to sign a three year lease prior by the end of February in order to have all the paperwork processed for our visas so I could start work April 1. Right. Okay. Let’s find a week where Amanda can take off work in January or February…anyone see this happening? Anyone ever seen Amanda stop working before 11pm in January or February? Because I’ve been a PwC spouse for 17 years now & I haven’t. Somehow she managed it. I’m still not sure how. She worked super hard and filed a client on a Friday in February, her parents came up to watch the girls for a week and we flew out Saturday morning (as an aside, I’m pretty sure Amanda worked most of the 12 hours she was on the plane over the ocean).

We landed Sunday morning in Zurich (another aside, with 62 sq miles, you don’t have room for an airport, so visitors will fly in/out of Zurich or Munich). Picked up a car rental and headed out. We got to our hotel and by luck managed to check in - there were no people at the hotel, only a kiosk and …surprise… everything was in German so we muddled through options until a plastic room key appeared out of the box and a three digit number displayed on the screen (we guessed well that this was our room number). We met some coworker friends for lunch and then drove around a bit to get the lay of the land and to keep ourselves awake from jet lag.

The next few days were a bit of a blur off looking at houses, signing the paperwork needed for the visas, attempting to open a bank account, touring daycares and Charlotte’s school. We also, at the request of a certain four year old, verified that there are playgrounds in Liechtenstein.

It was a good trip, we got a lease signed, we settled on Charlotte’s school, we picked a first choice day care for Olivia; it was waitlisted so we picked a second choice daycare for Olivia, we signed a bunch of paperwork for a bank account and we felt like we got a little taste of what living here would be like in a very short time.

Photo barrage with captions :

Our drive from Zurich to Liechtenstein was a bit rainy but you still can't beat these views.

Classroom at Charlotte's School - it was their February "ski" break (yes, that's a thing here) so there were no kids while we visited.

Olivia's daycare - keeping it in the family, it's a Hilti facility too ;)

We sent Charlotte this picture of a playground while we we visiting so she could see that there
would be playgrounds, she then requested (demanded? It's hard to tell some days)
that she see how the playground worked... so ⏬

This, and a million other reason, are why Amanda is getting Mom of the Year this year.  

Playground demonstration for a four year old.

Who has a Swiss (Franc) bank account? ⏫ These guys!
It took about 3 hours guys. And little did we know, we still weren't done...

So, um... Funny Story

You know how the last post said we were at the end of the adventure. Well…just kidding!

We’re heading back to Europe.

Let’s catch up on the last 8 years.

We moved to New Jersey for Amanda’s work. It was one of the most exciting jobs she’d had and we enjoyed exploring the northeast US for two years. The dogs loved snow.  Amanda did not. We met some amazing friends. But when the chance came to return to Texas, we took it. So, in 2016 we loaded up to what we told everyone (and we truly believed) was our final move. 

We lost our four-legged girls to old age about 5 years ago. Though we were sad, we know they both had amazing lives in all our explorations and we 100% know there are leash free dog parks with unlimited rawhides in doggie heaven that they’re both loving right now. 

We gained two two-legged girls who are equal parts entertaining, spitfires, curious, loving, and brilliant. (And that’s not at all the biased Dad talking)

Let's back up a year...ish, we were settled in Texas. The company I work for has their global headquarters in Liechtenstein and Amanda & I had talked about maybe some day it would be nice to explore mainland Europe more if we ever got a trip over there. In the meantime, we loved our neighborhood, Charlotte was in a great preschool, we were making renovations to our house since we planned to be there for the long term; all the things people of the suburbs do. 

Then one day I started looking at the internal job posting boards and saw a role I liked.  And it was based in Liechtenstein. After talking with Amanda (I’ve slowly learned that’s a key part of the process), and my boss in the US, we decided that I could apply for the job and see how it went. If they said no, we were still good in Texas, if it looked like things would progress we would make decisions on what we truly wanted. So I applied.  The rest is a bit of blur. Some weeks went really fast with a lot of interviews and discussions, other weeks I heard nothing and was frustrated as it looked like wasn’t going to happen. Long story short, the role I applied for was filled by someone else as they needed someone in the role quicker than I was going to be able to relocate but they had another role that hadn’t been posted yet that they encouraged me to apply for when it opened up and that turned out to be even more interesting to me and is ultimately what I’m doing.

So we're moving. We're restarting the blog. Dusting of our writing fingers. And heading out for another adventure!

The End of the Adventure

finished 

acabado

fini 

fertig 

τελειωμένος

finito

klar

bitmiş

 

Our blog is coming to an end. What a wild ride this adventure has been.

We have:

• visited 22 countries
• welcomed 21 guests (some several times…you know who you are)
• explored more than we could have ever imagined
• used 8 modes of transportation in our travels
• made international friends
• discovered new favorite foods
• learned a new language – English is difficult you guys!

 Furthest traveled in each direction:

• North – Tromso – 69˚ 40’ 58
• East – Corfu – 19˚ 52’ 0
• South – Corfu – 39˚ 35’ 0
• West – Dunmorehead – 10˚ 28’ 45

Thanks for reading along on our travels and escapades for the past three years.

In the words of John Denver

All my bags are packed
I'm ready to go

…

'Cause I'm leavin' on a jet plane
Don't know when I'll be back again

Gelato Crawl

 Pub Crawl:

  A round of visits to a number of bars in succession ~Merriam-Websters

Gelato Crawl:

  A series of visits to a number of Gelateria in succession in which you consume at least one Gelato in each ~Adam Powell

While Merriam’s definition of a Pub Crawl does not specify that consumption is required at each of the bars visited, and probably with very good reason, I am suggesting that for a Gelato Crawl you should most definitely consume at least one Gelato at each stop for any number of emotional and/or medicinal reasons. As I am also laying claim to this term here is the evidence of my first ever Gelato Crawl.

Hopefully more of these are to come! 

Pompeii

It’s our last vacation. Not like ever. But our last one while living in the UK. We shipped off our worldly belongings, made sure the pups got safely to Texas then hopped one more flight to Italy! I had Pompeii on my for all three years we’ve lived here and by the skin of our teeth we’re going to get it in!

We arrived in Naples and found our way through lots of back paths and beautiful floral lined passages to our hotel for the week.

What a view we had! We had booked the hotel online and it failed to mention that it completely overlooked the Gulf of Naples and out to the mountains in the distance. Someone really needs to work with their marketing department.

We booked a tour as we would not have a car with us and the thought of renting one and driving on the Amalfi Coast scared me and the thought of jumping in a taxi with an Italian driver to take me also was a hard pass. So we found a Rick Steve approved tour service which even picked us up at our hotel – SCORE!

Pompeii was just as fascinating and beautiful as I had hoped. When Mount Vesuvius erupted in 79AD, it ended the city while preserving it in a strange frozen in time snapshot view of Roman life. The eruption of Vesuvius lasted for two days. At first, it was mostly a rain of stone & soot lasting about 18 hours, allowing most inhabitants to escape. It’s thought that most residents were able to escape and probably even managed to salvage some of their most valuable belongings. At some time in the night or early the next day, pyroclastic flows began near the volcano, consisting of high speed, dense, and very hot ash clouds, knocking down wholly or partly all structures in their path, incinerating or suffocating the remaining population and altering the landscape, including the coastline. By evening of the second day, the eruption was over, leaving only haze in the atmosphere through which the sun shone weakly. Much of what this did was seal in whatever was happening at the moment of the eruption so minus some decay for a couple of centuries, when the excavators started digging in the 19^th/20^th centuries they got a true view of Roman life.

Next stop on our tour was Vesuvius itself.

Our tour guide assured us on the way over that we had nothing to worry about while climbing a still active volcano as he knew “how to say ‘RUN!’ in 27 different languages”. I asked him to go ahead and use English first if he felt the need to shout it.

We have climbed up & down a lot of things in our three years in the UK. Just a mental note for next time. Volcanos are steep!

But they have awesome views!

We're homeless!

We left our house today. It was good. Not that we were ready to leave. We’ve loved this little corner of Croydon where we have explored London from. We’ve had countless visitors. We’ve worked. We’ve played (okay, mostly played). But all really great things end eventually.

The girls left yesterday. All boxed up & ready for their flight direct to Grandma’s house in Dallas.

Our stuff left this morning in a container.

We have one more adventure in us then heading to our new home…which might be an adventure all in itself.

Tube Talkin' with Aunt Karen

Every nation has their list of quirks or unique pastimes that make zero sense to those on the outside who witness them. A few of our favourities from our three years living here are:

• Queuing for everything
• The ubiquitous inclusion of the letter U in seemingly randoum wourds.
• Using naught for 0 instead of zero because it’s not possible to pronounce Z in proper English without the following ed.
• Teatime (this may actually be my favourite and will be returning with me to the states. I just need to find someplace to sell me clotted cream!)
• Ingenious use of swear words. Of course, why wouldn’t they considering they invented the bloody language.
• The food. I still haven’t been able to wrap my head around the fact that this nation, at one point, claimed that the “sun never set” on it’s Empire and yet despite that impressive geographic expanse the common food staples are still HP sauce, canned beans and mushy peas.
• Very friendly once you get past the stiff upper lip.
• Health and Safety. Yes, other places in the world focus on this too but it is truly unique in the UK.
• Talking on public transport is strictly verboten. Particularly if you’re on the tube in London.

Frequently as we welcome guests to the country and prepare them for what to expect on their visit some version of this list will come up as they ask what we find unique and endearing in the native Britain. Aside from no one being able to grasp the culinary deficiencies of the British diet the most common surprise is the lack of conversation that occurs on public transport. Enter Aunt Karen.

When you visit London it is almost impossible to avoid using the tube at some point. The distances between tourist sights isn’t necessarily great but there are enough of them that you would easily clear 20,000 steps a day trying to “walk” the city. And while cabbies and busses are virtually everywhere on the roads most of the time Amanda and I never used them because 1) the buses are relatively slow going place to place and 2) the cabbies are either always full or not accepting fares’ because they’re on their way to pick up another customer or heading off shift. Which leaves us the rail network or tube.

I personally LOVE the tube. It’s relatively clean as public transport goes, always on time and there’s a unique energy that surrounds it which makes taking the tube an experience in and of itself for visitors. It also has a number of points of etiquette and safety that you are encouraged to follow while riding, such as Minding the Gap, standing on the right side of escalators, don’t crush yourself into an overcrowded car and “it’s okay to be quiet”. Of course, this last point of etiquette is written in the most British way possible.

If you’re not familiar with British parlance you can be mistaken for believing that this is just a nicely worded suggestion, however for those of you from or familiar with the American south “it’s okay to be quiet” has the same sense about it as the great southern Americanism “Well bless your heart”. On the face of it the saying sounds considerate and thoughtful but what we’re really saying is “well of course you idiot”. Similarly, “it’s okay to be quiet” happens to be the #1 point of etiquette on the tube according to the visit Britain website. So we can then infer both from it’s high ranking and the overtly polite form that it was written it’s meaning is far more important than a mere suggestion of politeness. With that being said, no one really cares if you talk on the tube or not. It’s just a great way to identify yourself as a foreigner when you do:). And it’s immensely entertaining to watch young teenage girls realize that everyone else around you aren’t speaking while your Mum recaps your day to the rest of the passengers in the car. Love you both!!!

Of course, riding the tube wasn’t the only thing Aunt Karen and Becca did. Some of my personal highlights from their visit were the Churchill War rooms, Traditional Tea at the National Gallery and visiting the Camden and Burrow Markets. But if you want to know there’s you’ll just have to ask them.