I started writing this post from the third-to-last leg of my journey back to the US from Switzerland. I’ll recap my weeklong girls’ trip in a sec, but first I just need to describe what was truly the longest travel day of my life. 😭

When my friends and I booked our tickets in May, I was under the impression that I’d be flying straight home to Dallas to begin the Texas stint of my year. There’s honestly no good rationale for why I thought this, but the result was that instead of getting a round trip ticket from New York, I booked an inconvenient one-way back; the price of the round trip had unfortunately skyrocketed by the time I sorted out my plans. Getting to Zurich a week ago was a breeze (bless nonstop flights!), but my journey home involved a half-hour trek to the train station at 5 AM, an hourlong ride from Basel to Zurich, a 2 hour flight to Warsaw, a 4 hour layover, a 9 hour flight back to New York, and finally an hourlong subway ride. It felt like I was flying all the way from Asia instead of Central Europe — after this experience, I would now gladly eat the cost of being on a direct flight. Lesson learned!

On the bright side, all that time gave me the chance to reflect on the vacation while it was still fresh in my mind. Switzerland was, without a doubt, the most scenic place I’d ever been. I had so many “pinch me” moments while taking in the sight of rolling green hills, waterfalls, bright blue lakes, and snow-capped mountains. (It honestly felt like being in a movie!) We alternated hiking days with city days to have adequate recovery time, but the hours spent surrounded by trees were by far my favorites. Overall, the trip taught me that I actually really enjoy spending time in nature. My runs were previously the extent of my outdoor interest, but now I totally see the appeal of hiking more frequently. (Still pretty uninterested in camping though. 😅)

I’m also so glad I got to take this trip with my two best friends from college. Maintaining a friendship across state lines is doable, but being together in person was so much more fun. This was especially true in the lazy but spontaneous moments, like when we randomly started watching The Summer I Turned Pretty in the evenings. And even though much of what we discussed felt more “adult” than in college (i.e. chronic pain, work stress, aging, political events), there was still that undercurrent of casualness and trust—aside from a handful of tenser moments that diffused quickly enough—that reminded me of our days as students. Maybe what felt so familiar was a seemingly shared sense of uncertainty in the future: it seems like we’re all just taking things day by day.

As nice as it is to be back in the States, there are lots of experiences I wanna recreate from my trip. For one, it was probably the most hydrated I’d ever been. All around the country were public water fountains that had constantly-flowing, potable (and delicious!) spring water. They were a delight to use, which motivated me to regularly drink water so I could refill my bottle whenever possible. (This also meant I was peeing constantly lol.) Even though we don’t have the same water infrastructure here, I’m trying to be more mindful about having a bottle on me and drinking throughout the day.

As I mentioned, another thing I loved was the sheer amount of time spent in nature! It made me think of the 20-5-3 rule, which I first read about in Morning Person. The rule states that you should aim to spend 20 minutes a day in a local green space (like a nearby park), 5 hours a month in wilder nature (like a state park or reservation), and 3 days a year in the backcountry. Modified for my own lifestyle, I’d like to adopt a 20-5, where the 20 daily minutes just refer to time spent outside and the 5 hours could take place at any park or trail that requires a longer commute to get to.

The last thing I want to continue at home is my language learning journey. Switzerland was the first German-speaking country I’d ever visited, and it was so satisfying to put what I’d been studying into practice. Since most Swiss people also speak English, they’d often switch as soon as they heard me struggle. Still, though, it was a thrill—half excitement, half fear—to order food in German or translate signs in my head. While there, I even bought a couple collections of short stories in German (for levels A1-B2) and a German-English version of The Little Prince.

While I hadn’t yet written about it here, learning German has become a part of my daily routine. For the last few months I’ve been doing Pimsleur, an audio-based language-learning program. Its premise is that we should learn foreign languages the same way we adopted our first language as children: primarily by listening and speaking, and only later learning to read and write. In my experience, foreign language classes are taught in the opposite order, which can result in slow, accented verbal communication even if reading comprehension is strong.

In my case, I want to be able to converse and consume media in German, so Pimsleur was a perfect fit! There are 5 levels with thirty 30-minute lessons each, and you’re supposed to do a lesson a day. (I get mine for free as audiobooks from the public library.) The style of each lesson is very call-and-response; you first hear an English speaker give a prompt, such as “You’re in a cafe when you run into an acquaintance. How would you say, ‘Do you have time for a cup of coffee?'” Then there’s a pause for you to try to say it in your target language, followed by a native speaker saying it, and finally another pause for you to emulate what the native speaker said.

This format really works for me! It gives me the opportunity to practice listening and speaking every day, and according to my boyfriend my pronunciation has improved dramatically. It’s also just really fun — I do my daily lesson while walking (I call them my “Pimsleur walks,” or Pimsleurspaziergang in German), which also helps me unintentionally hit the 20 minute target of the 20-5 I mentioned earlier.

In Switzerland, I’d naturally wake up an hour or more before my friends, which gave me the perfect opportunity to do my Pimsleur walks. Now that I’m halfway through Level 3, I only have a few more months before I’m done with the program. At that point, I’ll either try to find a German podcast or focus more on reading and writing; either way, though, I want to keep this daily 30-minute block for language learning.

Besides Pimsleur walks and hiking, my friends and I did a fair bit of city hopping! Below are my impressions of the places we visited:

• Zurich was our first stop. It was neat seeing the city observe “quiet Sundays,” and I also enjoyed how it wasn’t too crowded. All the bakeries we visited were great, and during one of my Pimsleur walks I went to the ETH Zurich campus, which made me wish I were a student again!

• Lucerne was super pretty, and it felt very French even though all the signs were still in German. It also had the most tourists, but it didn’t feel cramped. We did my favorite hike of the trip at a nearby mountain, Mt. Pilatus. That day also included my first and only toboggan ride, which was so fun and just a tad scary.

• Interlakken had the most breathtaking scenery, and it matched (if not exceeded) the mental images I’d had of Switzerland going into this trip. I’d never seen clearer water in my life.

• Basel was the most metropolitan, with many more cars than the other places we’d visited. Here we went to the Cartoon Museum, which was doing an excellent exhibition on Alison Bechdel. (Her tragicomic Fun Home was actually the assigned summer reading during my freshman year of college!)

Aaaand that’s all of our Switzerland trip! I came back feeling refreshed, rejuvenated, and motivated to finish out the year strong. I’m hoping to spend my final days in New York hanging out with folks in the city and reading, before heading down South. Until next time ✌️